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Open Source Finally Hits Real Silicon

Posted by timothy on from the mask-of-progress dept.

pagercam2 writes "While Open Source software has many success stories, hardware and particularly chips haven't had as much. While there have been multiple Open Source projects, none have come to a final product until now. The OpenRISC 1000 has been implemented by Flextronics Semiconductor(a division of Flextronics, the contract manufacturer possibly best known for its production of many Cisco products) along with PCI, 10/100 Ethernet, serial, GPIO etc. ... Details and pretty pictures available at OpenCores.org, and it even runs uClinux. Good Job!"

5 of 247 comments (clear)

  1. One can always hope.. by grub · · Score: 5, Interesting


    If they make money with this and other chip fabricators get on the open source boat then perhaps one day we'll see an entire open source chipset and motherboard combo. No "SecureThisBIOS" and "TrustedThatOS" needed.. That would be damn sweet.

    --
    Trolling is a art,
  2. Open Source Chipsets by Raynach · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I, for one, would like to see the open source community making open source chipsets, from the design, material, and the software to make it work. This is basically rebuilding the computer from the ground up, except with an open source backing of it. Why should major companies control the architechures that we are using? Although, the manafacteur of these chips may be a problem, but it would be very interesting to see electrical and computer engineers working on an open project to make a suprerior chip. This could, in fact, prove Moore totally wrong.

    Or, I'm just being fanatical and ranting about nothing, whatever.

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    - A
  3. What can't be open-sourced? by Un+pobre+guey · · Score: 5, Interesting
    How about the old VW sedan, especially the off-patent parts? Can an open-source automobile design based on, say, the 1980 VW sedan be set-up and evolved in poor countries?

    In general, what problems would there be in creating open-source engineering designs for hardware of all kinds branched off from off-patent intellectual property? That, as it turns out, was the express purpose of the US Patent system as conceived by Benjamin Franklin, unless I am mistaken.

  4. Re:Watch out... by robslimo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I appreciate the joke, heh, heh.

    But I'd like to point out that opencores has had a fair amount of its open IP commited to silicon to date... not via lithographic processes maybe, but in FPGA's at least in onesies twosies lots if not more.

    It's pretty sweet to be able to put a Z80 core on an FPGA along with a few peripheral cores and make a machine-on-a-chip that can run your legacy embedded code with little or no change... and at a faster clock rate.

  5. It was a trick question by Un+pobre+guey · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Those of you who claim it can't be done for reasons of economy of scale or emission regulations, among other things, are mistaken. Much of the work that would be required has already been done and has been on the market for decades. I was not thinking of the First World market. In the Third World, hand-made auto parts and Mom-and-Pop auto part factories are common. In that context, they are in effect pirating existing IP. To go the whole way and create an open-source design spec with easy to determine compliance tests would be the next logical step.

    This represents a branch point from the First World industrial paradigm of economy of scale and elimination of manual labor, coupled with planned obsolescence and faddishness to ensure a short interval between new car purchases. An open-source car reverses this drastically. Low economy of scale and higher manual labor content coupled with an open-ended product lifetime shifts the focus from the manufacture of the car to that of its components. The car owner repairs the vehicle over a period of many years, possibly turning over the majority of its components one or more times over a long period of time. Small-scale manufacturers would build a mix of components based on demand for specific versions of a component. Clever management of the project should consciously support this. This business model is unsustainable by massive industrial concerns, but might work well in an economy with lower-skilled, small-scale enterprise. It would not be massively profitable, but may be a model for keeping large populations employed.

    If the interconnection ot the automobile's components is carefully and thoughtfully evolved, a single vehicle might be an ever-changing machine, gradually absorbing better components over time. It would not be a static piece of technology that quickly becomes obsolete. This is a subtext of my original post.