Microwatt Hackathon Shows How Small, Open Cores Can Lead Big Changes in POWER Hardware

Why the Microwatt Design Challenge happened and who ran it

Last month a short, focused design contest brought a surprising amount of energy to a little-known corner of chip design. The Microwatt Design Challenge was organized by the OpenPOWER Foundation together with ChipFoundry to push people to build real hardware and tools around Microwatt — a small, fully open implementation of the POWER instruction set.

The goal was simple: get students, hobbyists and startups to take Microwatt and make something useful out of it. That could mean a low-power CPU core, an add-on accelerator, or a better set of software tools for compiling and testing code. Organizers wanted working demos that show Microwatt can be the basis for real devices, educational boards or prototypes that could one day go into production.

The challenge mixed remote submissions with live demos. Entrants had a few weeks to produce FPGA prototypes, software toolchains, documentation and short videos explaining what they built and why it matters. Judges were a mix of OpenPOWER engineers, academic researchers and representatives from ChipFoundry, which helps projects move from prototype to small-scale manufacturing.

How the top projects actually pushed the Microwatt core forward

The winners weren’t theoretical papers; they were hands-on builds that made Microwatt more useful. Across the top entries you could see three clear themes: practical FPGA boards that run the core, hardware add-ons that solve real problems, and software/tooling work that lowers the bar for new users.

The first-place project delivered a compact, multi-core Microwatt cluster running on a commercial FPGA board. The team focused on stable boot, Linux compatibility and clear instructions so anyone can reproduce the setup. That matters because a working Linux system is the baseline most developers expect before they start building devices or running experiments.

Another top entry was a small accelerator that sits beside Microwatt and handles cryptography tasks. It’s the kind of feature mobile and edge devices need to do secure tasks without draining power. The team showed the accelerator working in hardware and integrated it with a simple driver, proving Microwatt can host custom logic without a huge engineering effort.

A third winner concentrated on developer tools: an easier flow for turning Microwatt RTL into an FPGA image and a set of test suites that catch subtle bugs early. Tooling work often looks boring, but it’s what turns a neat idea into something a classroom or a tiny company can actually use.

Prizes were practical rather than flashy. Winners received FPGA boards and hardware credits, prioritized access to ChipFoundry’s small-run manufacturing options, and mentorship time with OpenPOWER engineers. Those resources aim to help prototypes become repeatable projects or early products.

Why these hands-on builds matter for the POWER ecosystem

At first glance Microwatt is tiny — it’s not trying to compete with server CPUs. But its openness and simplicity are its strengths. The winning projects show that a small, well-documented core can be a testbed for experiments that matter to hardware education, niche devices and the broader POWER ecosystem.

For the OpenPOWER community, these entries prove a point: you don’t need huge teams to add value. Teaching labs can use the cluster build to give students a real POWER machine to explore. Startups can use the accelerator work as a blueprint for adding custom blocks without rewriting a CPU. And the tooling improvements reduce the time and pain it takes to get from source code to a running board.

That matters because ecosystems grow when the entry cost is low. More people with working examples increases the chance that third-party software, peripheral IP blocks and small-volume manufacturers will treat POWER as a practical option for certain classes of devices.

How this event fits into the bigger open-silicon movement

The Microwatt contest sits at the crossroads of two big trends: more interest in open-source hardware, and more support for small-batch manufacturing and accessible toolchains. In the last few years we’ve seen open cores, reference designs and community toolchains become far more useful — and more people want to try building hardware without corporate gatekeepers.

Community-led efforts like this challenge help solve two stubborn problems in chip design. First, they create repeatable examples that newcomers can copy. Second, they stress-test the path from code to board and then to a small production run. That’s important because commercial design flows are still expensive and closed, while open-source flows are improving but need real projects to validate them.

There’s also a balance to strike between fragmentation and standardization. Too many one-off designs can scatter effort; well-documented reference builds like the winners’ projects offer a shared base. If multiple teams adopt the same basic Microwatt cluster or driver conventions, that shared work becomes a springboard instead of a dead end.

Where the community goes from here and how to tap into the work

The organizers are treating this challenge as a launchpad rather than a finale. Winning designs and documentation are expected to be published under open licenses, and ChipFoundry has signaled it will prioritize a few projects for prototype runs. That means some of the contest builds could appear on small production wafers or in limited-run boards over the next year.

If you want to try the results yourself, look for the published repositories and FPGA images once OpenPOWER’s channels update. Expect readable guides, pre-built images for popular FPGA boards and a short list of hardware needed to replicate demos. Educational groups should find clear lab tasks for students, while hobbyists can use the accelerator and cluster builds as starting points.

In short, the Microwatt Design Challenge didn’t just reward clever demos. It proved open POWER work can be practical, repeatable and useful for more people than just experts. For a small core and a short contest, that’s a useful nudge toward a bigger, more accessible hardware ecosystem.

Sources

• prnewswire.com