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OpenSPARC and Power.org, Who has it Right?
Andy Updegrove writes "Last summer, IBM set up Power.org, to promote its PowerPC chip as what it called 'open hardware.' This year, Sun launched the OpenSPARC.net open source project around the source code for its Niagara microprocessor. But what does 'open' mean in the context of hardware? In the case of Power.org, Juan-Antonio Carballo said, 'It includes but is not limited to open source, where specifications or source code are freely available and can be modified by a community of users. It could also mean that the hardware details can be viewed, but not modified. And it does not necessarily mean that open hardware, or designs that contain it, are free of charge.' True to that statement, you have to pay to participate meaningfully in Power.org, as well as pay royalties to implement - it's built on a traditional RAND consortium model. To use the Sun code, though, its just download the code under an open source license, and you're good to go to use anything except the SPARC name. All of which leads to the questions: What does 'open' mean in hardware, and which approach will work?"
Who has it right?
I hate that question because it assumes that One is Right and the other is wrong.
It is like asking a student what is the Square root of 9
One student says 2 and the other says 5. Well there is no consensious so one of them has to be correct right? No both are wrong.
In an other class that asks the same question
One student says -3 and the other says 3. So one of them has to be wrong they are different answers. No both answers are correct.
Just because they are multiple view points it doesn't mean that there has to be a write or wrong answer for one of them.
Open your mind people!
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
All of which leads to the questions: What does 'open' mean in hardware, and which approach will work?
I think you're confused. "Open" has traditionally been shorthand for "Open Standards". Thus your hear terms like "OpenWindows", "OpenLook", and "Open Group". They're all referring to the standards being available to all, and not any sort of Open Source Software take on those standards. Open Standards make the world spin 'round, and are a key reason why we have so much compatibility in our daily lives.
What you're thinking of is "Open Source", also known as "Free (as in freedom and game show prizes) Software". This is a very different category of of openess that relies on a developer to give up some of his rights to support the greater good. This is a laudable goal, but it is often not shared by coorporations and businessmen.
For what its worth, Wikipedia has a fairly good article on the concept of Open Standards.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Hey Nick, it's been a while.
The difference here is that we're seeing current generation high end processors start to appear here... there's a huge difference between low end, embedded CPU class cores being available and a Niagra T-1 SPARC. T-1 isn't the fastest single thread CPU out there, but it may well be the fastest total multithreaded throughput CPU out there on the market today. Whether that's appropriate for most users / workloads or not, it is clearly a huge difference compared to embedded CPUs.
I guess I don't get why IBM would have a problem with other people using their hardware specs for free. The barriers to entry are pretty big for one thing. It's not like your average Joe has a Billion dollar fab in his back yard and can use IBM's code to create a processor. The real trade secrets are in the manufacturing process. There's a big difference in making a chip and making millions of chips that cost less than $100 to mass produce.
No Sigs!
The phrase 'Open" means nothing. It implies many things, ranging from whether you're RMS to Steve Jobs. Developer programs have been mutating for years, starting way back in the '80s. The real depth of the programs, and their usefulness is pretty simple. Take an example: Intersil releases their specs for their chipsets for WiFi. These chipsets have more WiFi code in BSD and LinuxLand than any other, bar none. Proxim/Lucent/Terabeam/others have huge and cool software basis in the open source world. By contrast, others that mandate you swear fealty and pay staggering amounts of money for code, pragmas, instruction sets, timing info, and so on, get left in the dust.
If you RTFA, you'll find quite a contrasting amount of difference between two top vendors. But read the licenses carefully. Then, where lucky, look up code that others have done before starting to conjure up apps, drivers, and so on. This is the beauty of being open: code, reuse code, share code, improve code, make closed source knotheads look like the idiots they are.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
SPARC and PowerPC are pretty clearly niche and/or legacy architectures now. IBM has ceded the mainstream desktop to x86, and SPARC lost that battle a long time ago. The only question most people care about now is whether their x86 system is 32 or 64 bit, Intel or VIA or AMD.
Unless we're talking about the 100x or so more machines in the embedded space. Just because the chip isn't in a PeeCee doesn't mean it's not a computer. And embedded designers DO care about this stuff.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." --Groucho Marx
I think it's clear that they're not addressing the same market space. But my point was that this release by Sun is qualatatively different than prior embedded CPU releases under open source rules. Fewer people may end up synthesizing and using T1's than will use either FPGA or synthesized embedded CPU designs, but the availability of T1's design does open up interesting new possibilities.
For which, I agree, the "market demand" is unclear. At the very least I know that a lot of researchers are looking at it closely for ideas and comparisons. And given the licensing, someone who had a high-thread-count embedded application might find a use for. It's not entirely clear to me that the IP is in the noise... it's been a decade, but I was working around chip IP issues in the mid-90s, and a large chunk of the budget was the IP, and another was verifying the level of stuff which is already verified with the T1 design. You still need to synthesize and tape it out, but that's a large chunk of effort taken out.
I agree that the total number of shipped products from the T1 design release could end up being zero. But I wouldn't bet any serious money on that.
I can't help but wonder, when will be the second time in history developers can gain access to the chip multi-threading (CMT) technology unique to the UltraSPARC T1? Is that even possible as per definition?
Sun is big, they should know better than to let this bullcrap marketing business slang selling-point junk be the first thing a developer sees...