About time, but nothing special
by
brejc8
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
This isn't that amasing. Firstly this is done using a CPU and a DSP. No ogg specific hardware is mentioned. Secondly the chip isnt even a chip but a FPGA implementation. They can show that it works but mapping it out is another chalange if you want to keep it very power. Basicly what they have done was to pick up a core and stick it on an FPGA then compiled ogg/vobis for that CPU's ISA. Place a bit of a bootloader and something to handle the I/O and its done. No magic.
Re:About time, but nothing special
by
Aadain2001
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I have had the WORST experience with OpenCores! That place does nothing but point to company website who either want the core or have it and want to sell it to you! OpenCores is nothing but a front!
-- Space for rent, inquire within
Re:About time, but nothing special
by
femto
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Either Aadain needs a lesson on using a web browser, he is an industry plant, or he was just plain unlucky when he visited OpenCores.
Opencores project page has many original works on it, all written by opencores users, released under an open license and hosted on the opencores website.
That's just five. There are 79 more. Hopefully that will debunk Aadain's misinformation.
Accusing OpenCores of being a front is bit like accusing Debian of being a front. OpenCores is not a front.
In the interests of openness, I will point out that I am the maintainer of OpenCore's FAQ. The root page of OpenCores contains some links to case studies of some companies who have successfully used OpenCores in implementations. I will discuss with the rest if OpenCores whether these links are too prominant and are drawing attention away from the original work on the site.
text of the article
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
System IP to decode New digital music format Ogg Vorbis is ready for a market from FineArch, Inc. Achieved competitive 12MHz operation, targeting portable music player
FineArch, Inc., Tokyo Japan based semiconductor LSI design company, developed the system IP to decode the next generation digital music compression format, Ogg Vorbis(http://www. vorbis.com). FineArch successfully completed the Ogg vorbis sytstem IP to run at 12 Mhz. This is about 1/6 of the clock speed required to decode Ogg Vorbis with a single CPU system. This ultra low power IP fits well with the today's portable music player market where battery life is critical factor.
Ogg Vorbis is attracting much attention to the digital music world as a "license and royalty free" compression format. Ogg Vorbis is also known as its higher quality, higher compression ratio compared to MP3, current standard of the compression music format. Encoding and decoding process of Ogg Vorbis is more CPU intensive task than those of MP3. Hardware implementation of Ogg Vorbis has been scarce. FineArch.Inc fully noted the potential of the Ogg Vorbis, developed the Ogg Vorbis playback System IP.
This "System IP" consisted of Hardwared IP and Software IP which needed to build a portable music player. It has all the necessary components to build a standard portable music player.
"Hardware IP" includes "MultiCore Architecture"; CPU and DSP, Memory card interface, External memory interface, LCD controller, and Key input function. Only external memory and audio D/A converter is needed to build a complete portable player system.
"Software IP" includes DSP firmware do decode Ogg vorbis and the CPU firmware for overall system control. Fully utilizing the advantage of MultiCore architecture system sofware stacks are carefully distributed to CPU and DSP, achieving 12 MHz. This is the lowest system clock speed in the industry known today.
This "System IP" will be licensed to any customers looking for the royalty free, high quality digital music decoding capabilities on their system. Such system includes the portable music player,the game console, PDA, and the portable music entertainment system. FineArch also has the FPGA evaluation kit, which can be ordered directly.
Please go to download page for more information about this product.
Contact FineArch, Inc.
E-mail pr@finearch.com
URL http://www.finearch.com/
FineArch, Inc.
TIME24 BUILDING 4W-2 2-45 Aomi Koto-ku Tokyo 135-8073 Japan
Download page: It contains a form asking you for name, e-mail, profession, etc. and then you get to a page with a bunch of PDFs.
One more point for the open source community
by
deman1985
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Hopefully this will be just one more step towards commercially available, open source-based devices. I can't wait to get my hands on one of these devices, personally.
I wonder if any of the big vendors will pick them up?
How are they supported?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I admit I haven't looked over their license agreement lately, but I was under the impression that these people don't receive any royalties regardless of how and where Ogg Vorbis is deployed. If this is the case, how can they keep operating? How can they be supported?
This isn't a troll, I'm legitimately interested in keeping projects like this alive..
Wow, very low power!
by
nacturation
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Runs at only 12MHz (!), so this is going to be great news for portable devices which need long play times to be worthwhile.
Now the question is will the Apple Music Store start offering OGG format files? Maybe an iPod update?
-- Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Re:Wow, very low power!
by
Jucius+Maximus
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"Now the question is will the Apple Music Store start offering OGG format files? Maybe an iPod update?"
Do Apple's DRM (yes, it is DRM) and Ogg Vorbis's specifications play nicely together? I do not know...
I have read bits and pieces on/. and other site about Ogg, but I really don't see the appeal. For example, mp3's are so prevalent and portable recorders for them already exist, why would I change to a new format? Is Ogg clearer or cheaper or have smaller file sizes? Do p2p for Ogg exist? I'm interested to know what the appeal of this technology is.
If someone like myself was going to convert my mp3's (if that is even possible) not only would it take a good amount of time, I'd no longer be able to share files with my peers as not a soul I know owns a single Ogg file.
Enlighten this open mind!
--
-Valiss
Re:Is it needed?
by
groomed
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Ogg is supposed to be better than MP3 in two respects: firstly, it is unencumbered by patents. Secondly, Ogg appears to deliver better quality at low bitrates.
As to whether Ogg is necessary, well...
I'm ambivalent. On the one hand I don't want to slag off the guy who put so much work into Ogg. On the other hand, I don't support the idea behind Ogg at all. Ogg was created to protect us against the evil of software patents, but in doing so, it legitimizes that same evil. I would rather not acknowledge it at all: I'd rather see it die through a massive failure of enforcement (after all, in retrospect, what was all the brouhaha over the GIF patent good for?).
MP3 works. I don't have to worry about my player supporting MP3. I don't have to worry about other people being able to play my MP3s. And I don't worry about MP3 licensing terms either. To be honest, I don't anybody should.
I think that "major brand" could be Apple, if they ever add.ogg support to the iPod. It would be the start of a movement towards the better format.
Excellent!
by
DaedalusLogic
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Now this free codec will inspire me to re-rip all my audio to this new format and promptly go out and buy $1200 worth of computer equipment to do a home audio server up right!
Who says OSS fans are cheapskates? We just believe that all our money should be spent on durable goods. Which raises a couple of questions...
1. Is the reason that OSS fans don't like to pay for software because they think some people over-value their intellectual property?
2. Will the creation of an Ogg Vorbis decoder really creat the economies of scale that would allow hardware makers to make the jump.
In other words, will the money that they save in buying an Ogg Decoder for their player be worth the few cents per MP3 decoder royalty when coupled with the marketshare lead that MP3 now enjoys?
I'd like to see Ogg do it personally, but can it penetrate a mass market? I'd like to take Ogg out for a Jog.
Why would you want this?
by
Mike+McTernan
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I don't see why you would want specific hardware for this. Adding another chip to a product will make it larger, use more power and cost more.
The article says that they have "Hardwared IP and Software IP which [is] needed to build a portable music player" but realistically most portable music players will surely contain a general purpose CPU or DSP, meaning that they need only a good reference implementation which can be ported to common platforms (e.g. ARM) with little optimisation.
-- --
Mike
game companies like Ogg
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Most games nowadays have large amounts of compressed music and voice tracks. The mp3 licensing has become a "requirement" for game companies who want to stay competitive. Some have used Ogg instead though. It's free, has a good libraries for developers to use, and gets better quality than mp3s.
The guys over at Epic are probably the biggest name in the industry to jump on the Ogg bandwagon.
Re:Floating point?
by
leviramsey
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
For a while, the only freely available codec for Vorbis was floating point. However, there's been an integer decoder for a while (Tremor, IIRC), and it's now BSD-licensed.
Re:My first official KarmaWhoring action.
by
erikdotla
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I agree.
That, and the fact that when laymen try to get involved in the community to get familiar with it, they run into fanatical Linux-types who refuse to answer any question directly without criticising the person's lack of intelligence and unwillingness to find the information themselves, as well as the hordes of fanboi's who respond to everything with "OGG RULES! MP3s SUCK!".
I use WinXP at home because my home box is purely a game machine, no room for Linux. I use Winamp, and fact is, Ogg's take an extra half-second or so to load up than MP3s do, which are nearly instantaneous. The zero-patience attitude of technology consumers does not allow for such sloppiness, which is a strong reason to not convert everything over to Ogg.
That's assuming they know how to convert, or are willing to learn, which most people don't and aren't. And even if they did, everyone has 7 million MP3s from the Napster days, and it takes a REALLY long time to convert just one song to Ogg. Why bother?
MP3 is here to stay for a long time. Unless serious IP issues crop up with it, it'll definitely stay.
Ogg sounds better, but to most people, it's "a little better" or "unoticably better but I trust that it is, since everyone says so."
-- # Erik
OK, excuse for a daydream :)
by
timothy
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
What I'd like to see:
1) An available, no-futzing, no-fooling portable ogg player
2) that uses AA batteries (rechargables are now well worth it, and standard battery sizes are so much more convenient than a billion sculpted-to-fit li-ions)
3) that reads from CD / CD-R / CD-RW
4) and hopefully from DVD / DVD recordable formats as well
5) and even more hopefully, a slot for CF would be nice, or some amount (even 64 megs) of built-in flash
6) that costs less than buying a middlin' color PDA;) [Except for the choice of media, my Zaurus with its AA external battery back for power is nearly there... ]
Re:OK, excuse for a daydream :)
by
N8w8
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I have a Nex II MP3 player from Frontier Labs. It runs on 2 AA batteries, has a Type I/II CF slot, costs 100 euro, is flashable, can be used as a standard USB HDD (in Linux too) and has the same size as a pack of playing cards.
The only thing I hate about the player is that shuffle mode isn't 100% random.
They plan to support Vorbis in the next firmware release, which should've been ready in Q2 2003, but still isn't.
Tungsten T/C & Zire 71 can play Ogg for free
by
sjonke
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Palm's OS 5 PDAs can play Ogg Vorbis with the addition of either Aeroplayer or the other one (Pocket Tunes). Aeroplayer is notable for, among other things, being free (as in beer) for use with Ogg Vorbis (registration is only required for MP3 playback.) These PDA's all have an SD/MMC slot and accept standard MMC and SD cards which is better than most standalone players out there which have proprietary memory modules or no expansion possible. Note, however, that the Tungsten C only has a monophonic headphone jack. The Tungsten T and Zire 71 do stereo out of the box. I can vouch for the TT, which has excellent sound quality with Aeroplayer.
Having said that, since I don't like listening on headphones (gives me a headache), I find that there is little value in a portable music player that does not have enough space to contain your entire music library. In that situation (use only hooked up to car and/or home stereos) the constant need to swap songs out renders even an overpriced 512 MB SD card pretty pointless - the same can be achieved more conveniently with a handful of (much flatter than a Tungsten|T) CD-RW Audio CDs or less than one MP3 CD-RW with an appropriate CD player (which are cheap as dirt these days). Moreover, the loss of a CD-RW disc is inconsequential while the lose of a Tungsten T or even just an SD card would be quite distressing.
Better still, and what I do, plug your PowerBook into your car stereo's AUX input and control iTunes or what have you with Salling Clicker and a T68i or equivalent bluetooth phone. Talk about geek cool.... Further I'm considering acquiring an old G3 or G4 tower to mount in the trunk of my car - I envision automatic music syncing via an 802.11b connection with my home iMac jukebox when I get in range. Surely someone has done this already?
-- ---
What?
Re:Car audio player soon
by
pchan-
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Yes, well WinModems were designed to be lower cost, yet it didn't end up that way for the consumer. Also HP 820Cse were suppose to be cheaper but it didn't end up that way. What makes you say it's going to be different for these players.
Winamp, and... well, who really uses anything else?:D
I used to like Winamp before AOL took it over.
I've had more problems with Winamp 3.0 that it has totally destroyed my whole view on the winamp product.
I found a program called "foobar2000" and I like it as much as I did the old winamp. It lacks all those teenie bopper popular skins, but underneath a very ugly, so simple yet confusing interface, it just sounds better then Winamp.
Re:If OV ever gets popular...
by
DWIM
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Why is it even a question whether they have violated IP rights? Isn't Vorbis an open standard? Can't they verify whether their IP has been violated by looking at the code?
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't that amasing. Firstly this is done using a CPU and a DSP. No ogg specific hardware is mentioned.
Secondly the chip isnt even a chip but a FPGA implementation. They can show that it works but mapping it out is another chalange if you want to keep it very power.
Basicly what they have done was to pick up a core and stick it on an FPGA then compiled ogg/vobis for that CPU's ISA.
Place a bit of a bootloader and something to handle the I/O and its done. No magic.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
System IP to decode New digital music format Ogg Vorbis is ready for a
market from FineArch, Inc.
Achieved competitive 12MHz operation, targeting portable music player
FineArch, Inc., Tokyo Japan based semiconductor LSI design company, developed the system IP to decode the next generation digital music compression format, Ogg Vorbis(http://www. vorbis.com). FineArch successfully completed the Ogg vorbis sytstem IP to run at 12 Mhz. This is about 1/6 of the clock speed required to decode Ogg Vorbis with a single CPU system. This ultra low power IP fits well with the today's portable music player market where battery life is critical factor.
Ogg Vorbis is attracting much attention to the digital music world as a "license and royalty free" compression format. Ogg Vorbis is also known as its higher quality, higher compression ratio compared to MP3, current standard of the compression music format. Encoding and decoding process of Ogg Vorbis is more CPU intensive task than those of MP3. Hardware implementation of Ogg Vorbis has been scarce. FineArch.Inc fully noted the potential of the Ogg Vorbis, developed the Ogg Vorbis playback System IP.
This "System IP" consisted of Hardwared IP and Software IP which needed to build a portable music player. It has all the necessary components to build a standard portable music player.
"Hardware IP" includes "MultiCore Architecture"; CPU and DSP, Memory card interface, External memory interface, LCD controller, and Key input function. Only external memory and audio D/A converter is needed to build a complete portable player system.
"Software IP" includes DSP firmware do decode Ogg vorbis and the CPU firmware for overall system control. Fully utilizing the advantage of MultiCore architecture system sofware stacks are carefully distributed to CPU and DSP, achieving 12 MHz. This is the lowest system clock speed in the industry known today.
This "System IP" will be licensed to any customers looking for the royalty free, high quality digital music decoding capabilities on their system. Such system includes the portable music player,the game console, PDA, and the portable music entertainment system. FineArch also has the FPGA evaluation kit, which can be ordered directly.
Please go to download page for more information about this product.
Contact FineArch, Inc.
E-mail pr@finearch.com
URL http://www.finearch.com/
FineArch, Inc.
TIME24 BUILDING 4W-2 2-45 Aomi Koto-ku Tokyo 135-8073 Japan
Download page: It contains a form asking you for name, e-mail, profession, etc. and then you get to a page with a bunch of PDFs.
Hopefully this will be just one more step towards commercially available, open source-based devices. I can't wait to get my hands on one of these devices, personally.
I wonder if any of the big vendors will pick them up?
KappaStone
I admit I haven't looked over their license agreement lately, but I was under the impression that these people don't receive any royalties regardless of how and where Ogg Vorbis is deployed. If this is the case, how can they keep operating? How can they be supported?
This isn't a troll, I'm legitimately interested in keeping projects like this alive..
Runs at only 12MHz (!), so this is going to be great news for portable devices which need long play times to be worthwhile.
Now the question is will the Apple Music Store start offering OGG format files? Maybe an iPod update?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
I have read bits and pieces on /. and other site about Ogg, but I really don't see the appeal. For example, mp3's are so prevalent and portable recorders for them already exist, why would I change to a new format? Is Ogg clearer or cheaper or have smaller file sizes? Do p2p for Ogg exist? I'm interested to know what the appeal of this technology is.
If someone like myself was going to convert my mp3's (if that is even possible) not only would it take a good amount of time, I'd no longer be able to share files with my peers as not a soul I know owns a single Ogg file.
Enlighten this open mind!
-Valiss
I think that "major brand" could be Apple, if they ever add .ogg support to the iPod. It would be the start of a movement towards the better format.
Now this free codec will inspire me to re-rip all my audio to this new format and promptly go out and buy $1200 worth of computer equipment to do a home audio server up right!
Who says OSS fans are cheapskates? We just believe that all our money should be spent on durable goods. Which raises a couple of questions...
1. Is the reason that OSS fans don't like to pay for software because they think some people over-value their intellectual property?
2. Will the creation of an Ogg Vorbis decoder really creat the economies of scale that would allow hardware makers to make the jump.
In other words, will the money that they save in buying an Ogg Decoder for their player be worth the few cents per MP3 decoder royalty when coupled with the marketshare lead that MP3 now enjoys?
I'd like to see Ogg do it personally, but can it penetrate a mass market? I'd like to take Ogg out for a Jog.
I don't see why you would want specific hardware for this. Adding another chip to a product will make it larger, use more power and cost more.
The article says that they have "Hardwared IP and Software IP which [is] needed to build a portable music player" but realistically most portable music players will surely contain a general purpose CPU or DSP, meaning that they need only a good reference implementation which can be ported to common platforms (e.g. ARM) with little optimisation.
-- Mike
Most games nowadays have large amounts of compressed music and voice tracks. The mp3 licensing has become a "requirement" for game companies who want to stay competitive. Some have used Ogg instead though. It's free, has a good libraries for developers to use, and gets better quality than mp3s.
The guys over at Epic are probably the biggest name in the industry to jump on the Ogg bandwagon.
For a while, the only freely available codec for Vorbis was floating point. However, there's been an integer decoder for a while (Tremor, IIRC), and it's now BSD-licensed.
I agree.
That, and the fact that when laymen try to get involved in the community to get familiar with it, they run into fanatical Linux-types who refuse to answer any question directly without criticising the person's lack of intelligence and unwillingness to find the information themselves, as well as the hordes of fanboi's who respond to everything with "OGG RULES! MP3s SUCK!".
I use WinXP at home because my home box is purely a game machine, no room for Linux. I use Winamp, and fact is, Ogg's take an extra half-second or so to load up than MP3s do, which are nearly instantaneous. The zero-patience attitude of technology consumers does not allow for such sloppiness, which is a strong reason to not convert everything over to Ogg.
That's assuming they know how to convert, or are willing to learn, which most people don't and aren't. And even if they did, everyone has 7 million MP3s from the Napster days, and it takes a REALLY long time to convert just one song to Ogg. Why bother?
MP3 is here to stay for a long time. Unless serious IP issues crop up with it, it'll definitely stay.
Ogg sounds better, but to most people, it's "a little better" or "unoticably better but I trust that it is, since everyone says so."
# Erik
What I'd like to see:
;) [Except for the choice of media, my Zaurus with its AA external battery back for power is nearly there ... ]
1) An available, no-futzing, no-fooling portable ogg player
2) that uses AA batteries (rechargables are now well worth it, and standard battery sizes are so much more convenient than a billion sculpted-to-fit li-ions)
3) that reads from CD / CD-R / CD-RW
4) and hopefully from DVD / DVD recordable formats as well
5) and even more hopefully, a slot for CF would be nice, or some amount (even 64 megs) of built-in flash
6) that costs less than buying a middlin' color PDA
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Having said that, since I don't like listening on headphones (gives me a headache), I find that there is little value in a portable music player that does not have enough space to contain your entire music library. In that situation (use only hooked up to car and/or home stereos) the constant need to swap songs out renders even an overpriced 512 MB SD card pretty pointless - the same can be achieved more conveniently with a handful of (much flatter than a Tungsten|T) CD-RW Audio CDs or less than one MP3 CD-RW with an appropriate CD player (which are cheap as dirt these days). Moreover, the loss of a CD-RW disc is inconsequential while the lose of a Tungsten T or even just an SD card would be quite distressing.
Better still, and what I do, plug your PowerBook into your car stereo's AUX input and control iTunes or what have you with Salling Clicker and a T68i or equivalent bluetooth phone. Talk about geek cool.... Further I'm considering acquiring an old G3 or G4 tower to mount in the trunk of my car - I envision automatic music syncing via an 802.11b connection with my home iMac jukebox when I get in range. Surely someone has done this already?
--- What?
sooner than you think.
the phatbox and kenwood music keg already support ogg.
volkswagen and audi sell these as dealer installed options. and they are compatible with a wide range of car stereos.
here's how to play ogg files on it!
Yes, well WinModems were designed to be lower cost, yet it didn't end up that way for the consumer. Also HP 820Cse were suppose to be cheaper but it didn't end up that way. What makes you say it's going to be different for these players.
I used to like Winamp before AOL took it over.
I've had more problems with Winamp 3.0 that it has totally destroyed my whole view on the winamp product.
I found a program called "foobar2000" and I like it as much as I did the old winamp. It lacks all those teenie bopper popular skins, but underneath a very ugly, so simple yet confusing interface, it just sounds better then Winamp.
Why is it even a question whether they have violated IP rights? Isn't Vorbis an open standard? Can't they verify whether their IP has been violated by looking at the code?
Yes, that is true. I am not saying that Vorbis players will be cheaper, I am hoping that they will be cheaper.
...interesting if true.