After four years of discussion, the European Commission’s Open Microsystems Initiative is reported to have finally set out on its five-year mission to develop next generation microprocessor and software technology, which will use both new and existing architectures. Originally due to lift off last April with #200m funding, the Initiative now gets a reported #40 for some 20 projects that span a 100m transistor chip to binary interfaces that will enable software to run across Sparc, MIPS Computer Systems Inc R3000, Inmos Transputer and Acorn ARM RISC architectures – much like the Open Software Foundation’s Architecture-Neutral Distribution Format technology.
