One Student One Chip

From Open Source Chips to AI Hardware: Highlights from the ECOS Team at the JLC Spark Conference

On September 19, the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center in Futian was packed with visitors for the 4th JLC Open Source Hardware Spark Conference and Global AI Hardware Innovation Ecosystem Summit, hosted by JLC Group. The event attracted more than 2,200 engineers, makers, enthusiasts, industry experts, university faculty members, and students from countries and regions around the world. More than 50 industry partners also exhibited at the conference, showcasing the latest advances at the intersection of open-source hardware and artificial intelligence. The event created a platform for collaboration across the industry and opened a new chapter for the AI hardware innovation ecosystem.

As announced in our earlier article, "The ECOS Team Is Heading to the Spark Conference: Visit Our Booth and Explore Fully Open Source Chips", the ECOS Open Silicon Team (hereinafter the ECOS Team) joined the conference as a partner of the JLC Maker Fair. We brought our in-house open-source chips, development boards, robots, handheld game consoles, and chip design platforms to the event, presenting a range of achievements from across the open-source chip ecosystem. Visitors came throughout the day, from experienced embedded developers to students encountering hardware development for the first time. All showed strong interest in our vision of enabling everyone to design open-source chips.

"One Student One Chip" Participates in the Pakistan Semiconductor Summit

From March 27 to 29, 2026, the "One Student One Chip" team traveled to Lahore to participate in the 2nd Pakistan Semiconductor Summit. This marked the first time "One Student One Chip" had engaged with South Asia, and we were honored to be the only foreign team present at the event. During the summit, we delivered three main presentations: a roundtable discussion by Dr. Yu Zihao, a poster showcase of the "One Student One Chip" XiaoXin Mambo Robot, and a tutorial on ECOS Studio brought by the team.

"One Student One Chip" Xiong'an Base First Cohort Successfully Concludes

The "One Student One Chip" Xiong'an Base, currently based at the Xiong'an Institute of Innovation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, began its first enrollment and training in January 2026. The primary goal of this inaugural cohort is to help participants advance their learning in the "One Student One Chip" initiative, while also striving to build a sustainable incubation platform for university study groups.

To ensure training quality, the first cohort invited 8 outstanding teaching assistants, all from the university studios of Shenzhen Technology University and Taiyuan University of Technology. Student recruitment targeted the studio at Taiyuan University of Technology, as well as study groups from four other universities: Harbin Institute of Technology (Weihai), Capital Normal University, North University of China, and Henan Polytechnic University. After selection, a total of 12 students were enrolled in the first cohort.

Now, let's follow the camera to experience the learning and life at the base.

Minister of Education Huai Jinpeng: "One Student One Chip" Initiative – A New Model for Integrated Circuit Talent Cultivation

On March 7, the Fourth Session of the 14th National People's Congress held a press conference on people's livelihood. Minister of Education Huai Jinpeng noted that as a new mechanism and model for talent cultivation in the integrated circuit field, the "One Student One Chip" initiative guides each graduate student to complete their own chip design, enabling students to acquire capabilities in chip design, manufacturing, etc., upon graduation, which serves as an important foundation for industrial practice and innovation in the integrated circuit sector.

A Journey to Zurich: An International Classroom on Open-Source Chips

In February, the chill still lingered in Switzerland, but the exchange of ideas was already heating up. Members of the ECOS Team's "One Student One Chip" project traveled to Zurich, Switzerland, to participate in the EFCL Winter School 2026, learning about cutting-edge computing systems and open-source chip technologies alongside young scholars from around the world (mainly Europe).

This was an international classroom bringing together architecture, algorithms, tools, and hardware implementation, and also a journey to bring China's open-source chip achievements to the world.

"One Student One Chip" First International Bootcamp Successfully Concluded

Chapter 1: Reunion

Our connection with Professor Nursultan Kabylkas began in 2023. At that time, he learned about the "One Student One Chip" initiative from a presentation by Teacher Yungang Bao at the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Intrigued by the concept, after thorough discussions, he decided to introduce related courses at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan.

In February 2024, Professor Kabylkas adopted the "One Student One Chip" initiative and attempted to guide students in processor design. However, the course was not without challenges. Processor design demands strong hands-on skills, and as the course difficulty increased, fewer students persisted. After continuous experimentation and adjustments, Professor Kabylkas established a foundational course to help students build a solid base. Gradually, more students joined the journey of learning chip design. One of his students, Olzhas, after a year of dedicated effort, successfully completed his own processor chip design and had it taped out.

The "Wanxin" Open Source Chip Talent Cultivation Platform was Successfully Launched!

On November 8, 2025, the 2025 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit Network Information Technology Industry Ecosystem Development Forum was held in Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province. The forum, themed "Working Together to Build an Ecosystem and Share Development Opportunities," explored the future development direction and path of the network information technology industry ecosystem.

At the forum, the open-source chip team of the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, launched "Wanxin," an open-source chip talent cultivation platform. Since 2018, the team has been developing open-source chip design solutions, launching and deploying multiple projects including "One Student One Chip", open-source EDA, and open-source IP. After six years, the "Wanxin" open-source chip talent cultivation platform was launched. "Wanxin" supports the entire chip design process, providing a one-stop design and tapeout solution for open-source chip talent cultivation. In the future, "Wanxin" will be globally oriented, continuously dedicated to cultivating a large-scale open-source chip talent pool and helping to create a new ecosystem for open-source chip talent cultivation.