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Consumer Device With Open CPU Out of Beta Soon
lekernel writes "After years of passionate and engaging development, the video synthesizer from the Milkymist project is expected to go out of beta in August. Dubbed 'Milkymist One,' it features as central component a system-on-chip made exclusively of IP cores licensed under the open source principles, and is aimed at use by a general audience of video performance artists, clubs and musicians. It is one of the first consumer electronics products putting forward open source semiconductor IP, open PCB design and open source software at the same time. The full source code is available for download from Github, and a few hardware kits are available from specialized electronics distributors."
It's actually a great looking device for musicians like myself.
I doubt that. It's a $500 dev kit. Any tool you need for making music can be had from private companies with superior specs for less cash. Even if not, you could make a superior product by using an ASIC from a private company rather than a FPGA. If you buy one, it will be because you like the notion of it being open, not because it's technically superior to existing products.
I'm not particularly happy about my chances of legally
reusing code that starts like this:
// COPYRIGHT NOTICE
// Copyright 2006 (c) Lattice Semiconductor Corporation
// ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
// This confidential and proprietary software may be used only as authorised by
// a licensing agreement from Lattice Semiconductor Corporation.
// The entire notice above must be reproduced on all authorized copies and
// copies may only be made to the extent permitted by a licensing agreement from
// Lattice Semiconductor Corporation.
//
// Lattice Semiconductor Corporation TEL : 1-800-Lattice (USA and Canada)
// 5555 NE Moore Court 408-826-6000 (other locations)
// Hillsboro, OR 97124 web : http://www.latticesemi.com/
// U.S.A email: techsupport@latticesemi.com
is the highly proprietary FPGA technology used to implement the CPU. FPGA partition, place and route (ppr) is some of most proprietary software on the planet, slathered in trade secrets and patents. The chips themselves are worse. Think of them as a type of processor (after all an FPGA is just a bit cruncher) with a secret instruction set and compiler (ppr). Xlinix (major FPGA company) want potential customers to sign an NDA simply to have their salespeople say more than "we sell FPGAs".
If the Free Software community is to use FPGA's, as more than just a curiosity, first task is to design/build its own silicon and write its own toolchain. Then they come up against the proprietary nature of semiconductor manufacturing.
I'm not belittling the Milkymist project, as what I describe above is a separate project. It's a huge project, essentially a reimplementation of 50 years of semiconductor progress, ultimately linked to the (seminal) desktop manufacturing projects that some have started. Imagine RepRap mk42 with semiconducting, conducting and insulating inks, printing circuits at the micro-scale.
-- disclosure: I manufacture Milkymist One -- If it's a dev kit, it's the most stunningly beautiful dev kit I know. Have you seen the pictures? http://en.qi-hardware.com/wiki/Milkymist_One_pictures Technical superiority is very hard to judge, our goal is to make it super easy to use (basically just turn on), and then allow for anybody to dive deeper and deeper into it, all the way to the free hardware acceleration in the fpga. Tutorials needs to be written, videos made, etc. I will take some time. But please accept for the 'dev kit' feedback: From day 1 of this project, we didn't want it to be a dev kit. All we care about is make very easy to use, beautiful, long lasting and fun products.
All wrong :-) It has no metal shielding because it is so well designed. We absolutely went to an EMI test lab to be able to classify it under CE and FCC regulation. Under FCC regulation, Milkymist One is a non-intential radiator and thus does not require an FCC ID. It is enough that the manufacturer verifies that it is in fact meeting the requirements of a non-intentional radiator. The entire test lab report (31 pages) is online
http://en.qi-hardware.com/wiki/File:Reichl_milkymist_one_tests_11000301.pdf