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Sourceforge + Hardware = OpenH?
dantes wrote to us about OpenH.org which is a new site focusing on open hardware, and references for hardware. Good idea - it's just starting out, but the references and designs will make life easier for open source drivers, as well as working with new systems. My only caveat is that when I read OpenH, I thought about a methadone replacement, but that might just be me.
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Carmack is an elitist, pseudonerd bastard.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
To reproduce a hardware design, unlike software, is not within the capability of the average individual. It requires a large initial investment in time, and money to set up a production run for something. However, there are some rather interesting properties of solid-state electronics that are very similar to software. Like software, hardware requires a large investment of time and resources to design, and a small percentage to distribute. Creation a new design of a silicon chip, such as the Pentium processor, RAM, or any of the support chips on a computer requires a great deal of money and resources. First, an idea must be developed into a design, and then the design must be verified and tested. Then, after that, a great deal of resources will be put into setting up a production line to produce the design. These two steps require anywhere from 75% to 95% of the total resources involved in developing a new chip. Once the design is in production, the incremental cost of making another chip (from raw materials and running the production line itself) is extremely small. Semiconductor makers are effectively "printing money" after they have recouped their initial investment. This is why hardware and software are similiar: the incremental cost of distributing both is very small.
The role the organization I want to create would play would be to act as a focal point for the the exchange of information, and would profit by taking the best ideas and turning them into real and marketable products. Instead of having my organization go through the first step of design, I would encourage entities and stake holders outside my organization to do the design phase of the process. This way, the end customer is intimately involved in how my products turn out in a way that no current company in the high tech industry can match. By doing this, I will eliminate several of the major risk areas in high technology. No one has a better idea of what they actually want than the customers, and if they have a stake in the design of a product, they will be much more likely to buy it than if they did not. My customers for my hardware products will be my suppliers for my 'intellectual property'. I just hope that this OpenH stuff succeeds.
www.opencores.org
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I was working on a flat tax proposal and I accidentally proved there's no god.
Take the infamous Cuecat, for example... Wouldn't it be nice if OpenH hosted a CueCat project?
Other examples could be DVD mods (for taming region-locked players into the region-free sheep they should be).
Have fun....
If they had some open hardware, like a nice server.... maybe then they will be able to keep their site online while being slashdotted.
x
Ever need an online dictionary?
Open Sourcing some hardware designs now is a good idea, and a good way to begin building up a knowledge base while working out the inevitable technical kinks such a system will encounter.
Currently, it may seem that this knowledge base won't get much use, since most people don't have access to the specialty design, testing, and fabrication equipment needed to really crank out sophisticated circuit boards.
Before too long, though, you'll be able to print circuits with polymers on polymer substrates with modified ink-jet printers.
When that happens, we'll see a tremendous explosion in this segment of the industry, and Open Source will already be there.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Actually, I was thinking of OpenHentai.
Yeah, we're all perverts.
K45
This signature has eleven vowels.
I signed up a project, and after having been warned during the sign up process I was in for a massive terms of conditions to read and sign, was pleasantly surprised by the "We haven't thought of these yet, we may do in the future" notice. I'm not sure how that would stand up in court, but it is an alternative approach to the legal minefield.
I never managed to finish the sign up though, and now the site seems completely dead. It had a slight whiff of burning 486 about it...
For the last 4-5 years or so it has served as a nice repository for documentation on all aspects of OS design, and even hosts open hardware specs. In OS design circles it is pretty widely recommended. I look forward to being able to work with the OpenH people: we seem to overlap on a lot of our goals.
Anyways, I hope that this site is useful to our whole community! :) When the OpenH site is unslashdotted, I look forward to seeing what they have available!
-Chris
How does this differ from the long established Linux Hardware Database ?
www.opencollector.org
Open-hardware.org provides, among other things, an open source test suite for various system hardware.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Common+Hardware+Ref erence+Platform&btnG=Google+Search
Google for CHRP yourself.
While not as open as some goatse.cx GNU/FSF weenies would like, it is an open architecture that anyone can build.
But do not trust my memory on this! Use the Google link above.
-Todd
One thing confuses me... What type of hardware? Are we talking design of chips or a project with existing, readily-obtainable hardware? When i read about open hardware I imagine ranges of circuit diagrams that people can improve upon. Like an audio amplifier, for example, where improvements can reduce distortion, etc. Is this what it's really about? I don't think I could imagine PC circuit boards being designed with surface-mounted components. I mean, 99.9999% of people couldn't build them anyway. A wide range of hardware, not limited to just computers, might be even more successful.
Do your best, hope for the best, suspect the worst.
This is certainly true for small production runs (ie under say 100k parts) design costs and tapeout NRE dominate - and it's true - those 2 things do cost the bulk of developing a new chip (because those 2 things basicly are 'developing a new chip') - but for really large production runs you care about yield, wafer cost, testing and packaging - to a first estimate:
testing cost is a little harder to figure in since some of it is done for diesort and some after packaging (where you have to include all the bad packages you toss away). Yield is also highly proportional to dies/wafer - if you have 10 random defects on a wafer then if you are pulling 1000 small dies off of the wafer you're likely to get a 99.9% yield - but with 10 dies per wafer you might get a 10% yield if you are lucky.How you do actually accounting of the NRE depends a lot on your business model - but for a lot of companies who are using an outside fab it's it's more likely to be tossed in on top of the packaged chip cost along with things like profit and marketting costs.
Back to the original point - if you spent $5M of engineer costs and NRE to develop a chip that costs $20 packaged and you are selling 10 Million of them you only need to add 50c on top of the packaged chip cost - this is chicken feed next to the package itself which might cost you anything from $1-5. On the other hand if you are selling 10k chips you have to amortize your R&D at $500/chip ....... and unless you have one of those military contracts for hammers your boss will probably be having his head handed to him on a plate by senior management ....
Do I detect Y.A.C.T.?
... or ... !
(Y.A.C.T. = Yet Another Conspiracy Theory)
You could be right
Whatever!
A lot of people seem to be concerned about the problems with 'open hardware' development - fab. costs, logistics, and so on. These certainly are major stumbling blocks.
:-)
However, how about a more modern business model? Here in the UK, ARM have been designing first-class processors for years, and yet they don't make any chips themselves. They *licence* their designs to other manufacturers (eg. VLSI, Intel, etc.).
So - all we need is an OpenHardware licence, some outstanding technology, and some effective advocacy. Think about it - the openh team could design an absolute corker of a processor, then some manufacturer could manufacture it, and would be obliged to put their 'real-world' improvements/refinements/fixes back into the open. After a few iterations of this, momentum would gather, and we'd have a well-tested, well-designed, real-world piece of hardware.
Wishful thinking perhaps, but if you'd have told me twelve years ago that some companies would be making money from selling products based on an entirely freely available, hobbyist-designed OS, I might not have believed you. Things change, sometimes for the better.
The only trouble is, all those chip manufacturers would get rich quick off the labours of the open hardware designers. But that's a philosophical argument for another day...
arnald
All products will become commoditized. The only way companies will be able to set themselves apart is with superior marketing. That's right--in the long term, Open Source plays into the hands of the marketroids. If you're in high school, forget about studying technology. All your technical abilities won't be worth squat. Study advertising instead. You'll have more fun, the courses will be easier, and then when you get out of school you'll be able to push around the few techies that are actually still employed.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I'm inclined to agree with you, Brainz, re the Natalie Portman stuff ... I think there must be a lot of teenage techno-weenie wannabes with raging hormones out there ...
... such is life! ... I just wish they wouldn't inflict the rest of us with their output(s) inspired by their raging teenage hormones!
Ah well
$0.02
I currently have two hardware projects on openh.org, and am currently working on a third one. All three are meant to make life easier for the person who needs to develop hardware that runs software, free or not.
... no problem, can do. You want serial I/O? - ...reprogram it and it will do it. You need some arbitrary function? You can do that too. I provide the full specification of how it works, plus the CAD files for those who are interested, along with the manufacturing files and sample VHDL code to show how to use it as well - all under GPL.
The first two devices are ISA bus I/O cards for control of hardware devices. In this case, the cards themselves are programmable (in the VHDL language) to allow the hardware functions to be changed, without ever having to remove the I/O card from the computer. You want parallel I/O?
The current project is a GPLed control board using a Motorola ColdFire processor. Once again, all of the data is available right there on the openh.org site. The goal is to make it run the uClinux code with no customization actually required. This will be fully free software running on fully free hardware.
Now my projects are still available on my own site http://FreeIO.org/ but when Alan at the University of Cape Town approached me about hosting my projects on the openH.org site, I jumped at the opportunity. Just as with Linux or any software project which is developed in the open, there is the opportunity for others to benefit, and their feedback will help improve the project.
Contrary to the statements of some, developing hardware is not really harder than developing software, although the tools are different. Open source tools are not there yet, but free (beer) tools are available which work on smaller projects rather well. An example is the freeware version of the Eagle electronic CAD system http://www.cadsoft.de/ which handles schematic and printed wiring board designs very well, and runs natively under Linux. You do have to learn it to use it, but the same can be said or C/perl/python or whatever.
Free Hardware design? Absolutely.
Enjoy!
Marty
Free the mallocs!
I thought about a methadone replacement, but that might just be me.
Yes, I think that is just you.
--
Graham