PMC-Sierra (Nasdaq:PMCS) announced its Open Source Network Computing (NC) initiative to enable commercialization of low power thin client solutions for education, enterprise, self-service kiosks, retail displays, Internet cafes, and advanced video-on-demand.

PMC-Sierra's open source NC solution, the PMC Xiao Hu (Little Tiger), is a commercially available single board thin client solution co-developed with China's Tsinghua University, MIPS Technologies, and ATI Technologies, and is expected to achieve reduction in power and costs compared to the traditional desktop PC approach.

The PMC Xiao Hu is a Development Kit containing a working prototype of an open source network computing system along with fully documented hardware and software reference designs. The hardware reference design comprises schematics and PCB layout; the software reference design has build instructions for a boot loader, Linux kernel and thin client protocol applications.