OpenSPARC and Power.org, Who has it Right? 125
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?"
Binary minds want to know. (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:Binary minds want to know. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Binary minds want to know. (Score:2)
Re:Binary minds want to know. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Binary minds want to know. (Score:1)
Re:Binary minds want to know. (Score:1)
"For example, the principal square root of 9 is sqrt(9)==+3, while the other square root of 9 is -sqrt(9)==-3. In common usage, unless otherwise
Who has it right? (Score:3, Informative)
its
This is the first sentence of the post -c'mon don't make it so easy - I swear I am not a spelling nazi.
Re:Who has it right? (Score:1)
Re:Who has it right? (Score:2)
Re:Binary minds want to know. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Binary minds want to know. (Score:1)
it doesn't mean that there has to be a write or wrong answer
and then it snapped shut again!
You are what you write... right?
Re:Binary minds want to know. (Score:1)
These days you can't assume that just because someone writes illiterately on the internetwebs that they are stupid.
Maybe they are just using some kind of advanced irony that you don't understand, trolling for pendants.
Re:Binary minds want to know. (Score:2)
Re:Binary minds want to know. (Score:2)
You have inspired me, so I will now release the source code of my mind in order to have an "open mind"... currently I'm running on the v.20 firmware and my mind maps out a little like this... "beer---sex---...beer"
Open Hardware (noun): (Score:2)
Well... (Score:5, Informative)
The LEON 2 SPARC-compatible core has been around for years.
Anyone doing a real chip design, however, can afford to pay for a real supported core.
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Well... (Score:2)
Anyone using an FPGA would use a smaller hardcore built into the FPGA or something like a MicroBlaze softcore. You couldn't fit a synthesized, OOO SPARC on all but the biggest FPGA.
Anyone doing an ASIC which has a use for a high performance CPU would just buy the IP anyway, as it gets into the noise compared with all the other costs.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
For which, I agree, the "market demand" is unclear. At the very least I know that a lot of researchers are looking at
Re:Well... (Score:2)
Would be nice to have a low power (say 5 to 10 watts) Sparc board to run Solaris - something like a Sparc equivalent to the Soekris boards.
Re:Well... (Score:1)
"Real design" (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember reading ~1992 that anyone doing real software development could afford to pay for a real supported compiler. They were downplaying the benefit of GCC and the other GNU tools. Well as hardware has gotten cheaper and faster and the Internet has expanded and more people have gotten tech-savvy, guess what? Lots of people are doing *REAL* software development with FLOSS software tools.
Back when you needed $10000 w
About being the first one... (Score:1, Insightful)
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
Re:Well... (Score:1)
You keep using that word. (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [wikipedia.org].
Re:You keep using that word. (Score:2)
Wait, you mean I'm required to pay tax on the value of the free software I recieved? It's a good thing I still have 5 days to correct my tax return!
Re:You keep using that word. (Score:1)
Re:You keep using that word. (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe "Open" in the sense of hardware means that you know how it works because its documented. NVidia graphics cards are NOT open. One of my microphone preamps is open. It has a pseudo-schematic that shows the signal flow through the device, so I know what control does what and where it is in the signal path. Without the schematic, I would still be under the assumption that the output knob adjusts the output on both the digital and analog outputs, but the schematic clearly shows me that its only on
Re:You keep using that word. (Score:1)
Opening the source allows people to expand on it. The Open hardware model lets you do the same, because OSes and drivers are, in a way, an extension on hardware much like plugins extend software functionality. By having more development focus around a certain hardware platform more demand can possibly arise. So SUN and IBM can make more money out of 'ou
Re:Apples/Oranges (Score:5, Informative)
No, Sun has always designed the majority of the CPUs that they use in their systems. They are fabless; they don't own the chip fabrication factories... but they have buildings full of people working on chip design.
Others have designed SPARC CPU chips (Fujitsu / HAL; Ross) which Sun used, as well. But Sun engineers designed UltraSPARC-I, II, IIi, IIe, III, IIIi, IV, T-1, and going backwards the SuperSPARC, MicroSPARC-I and II, most of the Sun-4 and Sun-4c generation stuff.
Answer: NEITHER (Score:5, Funny)
Just imagine what could happen if terrorists used the freely and openly available source code in Linux for example to create some sort of super weapon. The results could be catastrophic.
I am pushing like crazy for the US government to take full control of all USA based computer hardware and software companies, effectively creating one large mother company. There would be no more OS wars as there would only be one. Consumers would have the benefit of knowing that their hardware and software was US GOVERNMENT APPROVED (TM) and terrorism free.
To take it perhaps one step further, the government could even enable monitoring devices within the equipment to further prevent any crime or terrorist attacks.
As the old saying goes: IF YOU HAVN'T DONE ANYTHING WRONG YOU DON'T HAVE ANYTHING TO WORRY ABOUT.
Re:Answer: NEITHER (Score:5, Funny)
Which is why you felt free to post this under your account, Mr... Coward, is it?
Re:Answer: NEITHER (Score:1)
What makes you think they dont already do this?
Re:Answer: NEITHER (Score:2)
For some reason, I'm not entirely certain that he was joking.
*shudder*
Right/Practical (Score:3, Interesting)
The more interesting question is "what use is an open core?"
Open source software has obvious utility in that it can be used by millions of people for a wide variety of jobs. All you need is a computer to get started.
Open hardware, on the other hand, is useful only for education or simulations unless you happen to have a fab plant.
If education and experimentation can be served by a "non-free" license then is there really any benefit to having a "free" license? I suspect by the time off the shelf technology is available to create CPUs based on current designs, they will be centuries obsolete. Even US copyrights and patents will have expired by then (unless they change the laws again) so it's a bit of a moot point.
Now I grant this might be a bit of a narrow viewpoint - for example some of the Lisp hardware designs would be very interesting to work with - but since the hardware costs of this sort of manufacture make the information needed to do it only one component of the (EXCEEDINGLY expensive) whole, I'm not sure the marginal benefit of having "free" cores will be very interesting, at least for something like a modern CPU.
Of course, there are non-economic considerations, but I don't really see overwhelming benefits for the "free as in freedom" model as opposed to the "free except for producing your commercial product based on them" model.
Re:Right/Practical (Score:3, Interesting)
Or MOSIS [mosis.org]....
A few thousand bucks and a working chip design will get you parts these days, in suprisingly modern fab processes (a few tens of thousand for 0.13u and 90nm).
Re:Right/Practical (Score:1)
I'm a bit out of it on the latest design requirements for CPUs - is the technology of these folks actually good enough to make a reasonably modern CPU?
Re:Right/Practical (Score:2)
You could probably get something in the P3 coppermine range with the 130nm tech. The 90nm will get you theoretically get you P4 or opteron systems but Intel and AMD use a lot of custom tweaks that MOSIS won't do. I think you'll need to assume that you need a generation better to match commericial cpu cores. E.g. a commericial cpu produced in 130nm would
Re:Right/Practical (Score:3, Informative)
Yes. I believe that the best MOSIS process is the IBM 90 nm process [mosis.org], which is 7 metal layer, pretty flexible. The T-1 SPARC we're talking about (Niagra) is a 90 nm, 9 metal layer Copper wire fab design (see Sun's Specs [sun.com]). You can't quite fab a T-1 as Sun laid it out with IBM's process, but it's pretty close. You could produce a roughly the same size,
Re:Right/Practical (Score:1)
Re:Right/Practical (Score:2)
Re:Right/Practical (Score:2)
Open Hardware would also lead to growth in open hardware design tools, as companies won't be viewing their design tools as secrets that need to be kept anymore.
Be
Re:Right/Practical (Score:1)
Re:Right/Practical (Score:2)
Re:Right/Practical (Score:2)
Either the
one example (Score:2)
Yes, it won't perform as well as a real processor but there are times when CPU performance is not the bottleneck. Electromechanical systems spend a lot of time waiting for the motor to get
Re:Right/Practical (Score:2)
No, they don't yet make it possible for me to churn out SPARC chips in my basement. But I work in academic electronics research, and I've recently seen a talk on a machine that can be used to print (medium-scal
Clarifications (Score:5, Funny)
- "Viagra" is a sex drug. I ordered some from a nice company that emailed me. It will also be here soon.
- Sun's chip is called "Niagara"
"Niagera" is none of these things.
Why not let people use the code? (Score:3, Insightful)
e-iOpenBuzzword.com (Score:3, Interesting)
Then there was the i craze. iPod,iMac,ivillage.com, BMW's iDrive, ....
Maybe "open" is the new cool prefix to use. I'm sure anyday now someone will be selling OpenPods, sending openMail...
Open Door, Brick Wall Behind It (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Soft, Hard and Open (Score:2)
Re:Soft, Hard and Open (Score:2)
You're confusing firmware with hardware. If hardware can be programmed (as with an FPGA), then the firmware is indeed like software. But the hardware itself is still immutable. Most hardware components are not amenable to modification. No matter how much I try, I can't reprogram a SPARC as a PowerPC.
p.s. But I do want the hardware *specification* to be open. That's what this article is about.
Re:Soft, Hard and Open (Score:2)
Re:Soft, Hard and Open (Score:2)
But you can't! That's my point. Despite your desires to the contrary, most hardware is NOT an FPGA. But more than that, even the ones that are, are not generic program-whatever-you-want boards! I have an FPGA based video card hear at work, and try as I might, I cannot get it reprogrammed as a sound card. To do so involves relaying out the board with different chips. The central Altera chip may be th
Re:Soft, Hard and Open (Score:2)
I have not desired that all current HW be open. I merely talked about [slashdot.org] "what is open", while also acknowledging there is other "open HW": "There's other kinds of open hardware". Your "
Re:Soft, Hard and Open (Score:2)
Re:Soft, Hard and Open (Score:2)
Re:Soft, Hard and Open (Score:2)
Does it matter? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Right now, most open source software tends to be tested and hacked on to at least make it run on PowerPC, for the benefit of Mac users. As the PowerPC Mac users switch to x86, who's going to care about PowerPC compatibility? I remember what it was like running Linux on PowerPC before OS X, and it wasn't pleasant--lots of stuff x86 Linux users took for granted didn't work, or you were stuck with old versions, because nobody had bothered to port, test or debug it.
SPARC and PowerPC will continue in the high-end server niche, but I think that niche is increasingly going to be squeezed by x86 too. Why deal with the possible risk of having your enterprise application break on PowerPC Linux, or being stuck with old versions of software, when you could run it on a big x86 Linux system and run the same binary 90%+ of the app's users are relying on every day? Sometimes there's safety in numbers.
PowerPC has the embedded space, of course, and maybe that'll be enough to sustain it as a target for general purpose code. I guess video game toolkits and related libraries will continue to be ported to PowerPC, at least.
But to go back to "openness"--in the embedded and video games space, who cares if the design is "open" or not? All the PowerPC video game consoles are locked down proprietary systems, as are various other embedded PowerPC systems like TiVo and car computers. And in the high end server space, I don't know that anyone cares there either--System i and System z seem to do OK without having open standard CPUs.
[Opinions mine, definitely not IBM's, obviously... and I may be completely wrong, perhaps openness is important in those niches?]
Re:Does it matter? (Score:1)
Re:Does it matter? (Score:1)
Especially given that most pc's have several embedded computers built into them, think ATA, RAID, FDC (do computer's still have those?), system watch dogs, some lan cards, printers and tv tuners, for a start.
Embedded, Embedded, Embedded!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Embedded, Embedded, Embedded!!! (Score:2)
Re:Embedded, Embedded, Embedded!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
I must respectfully disagree; ARM is far from open (Score:2)
ARM can hardly be considered an "open" architecture. Very old ARM architectures, yes. For some years, ARM (the company) have been aggressively blocking independent implementations of the later ARM architectures, even incomplete subsets, from being distributed.
One of the most interesting open hardware projects to be pulled from distribution was an incomplete ARM clone, due to legal pressure. You're not [eetimes.com] allowed [opencores.org] to independently design a circuit which implements the ARM instruction set.
You're not even a [gnu.org]
I stand corrected (Score:2)
Re:I stand corrected (Score:2)
It saddens me too. The trend seems to be to use MIPS instructions instead of ARM, when implementing a CPU from scratch. Much less hassle. But even there, when Alteon implemented a MIPS-compatible CPU in their (now old) gigabit ethernet controller, they left out a c
Hacker appeal? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, everybody just wants a nice cheap powerful x86 box these days, even Mac users. But there'd be a lot of hacker appeal to having the source for the processors available. Everybody would tinker with their processors and implement them on FPGA [wikipedia.org] (a cheap way of fabbing chips on a small scale, basically). Instead of people boasting about their tuned kernel, we'd be boasting about our tuned processors. "I got my Ope
Re:Does it matter? (Score:1)
Maybe the Chinese will design something crazy, and radically different...
I care. (Score:2)
I'm hoping for more, not fewer PowerPC platforms. PowerPC continues to do more per watt than other hardware. It's better for the kinds of small, quiet systems most people really want. The Mac mini is a great example of the kind of system I'd like next. The same things make an attrac
Re:Does it matter? (Score:2)
Am I asking too much? (Score:2)
I am NOT going to pay $2k for a reference board. It seems to me that for all of IBM's talk about openness with respect to the PPC architecture, it doesn't seem to have done an awful lot to bring it to the masses.
LK
How's about this, then... (Score:3, Informative)
Hey, those guys are making progress (Score:1)
I wonder if they'll get the dual core unit out any time soon. These are prices I can afford.
Re:Am I asking too much? (Score:1)
AGP, PCI, upgradable cpus.
Best of all, when you want to actually get work done, it'll run OSX!
In related news, China now to produce redSPARK cpu (Score:2)
Please post your comments with your Redberry.
Both of them are right (Score:3, Interesting)
But it's no way as cool as the Solaris port to PowerPC.
Sun is involved in both, you see!
So who cares? They're both right.
Re:Both of them are right (Score:2)
Other Open PPC implementations (Score:2)
stop the "open" avalanche (Score:1)
I say RMS should patent the word "open" in IT context and only GPLed stuff may be called "open"...
GNOPEN ? (Score:1)
Or even trademark, perhaps (Score:1)
ERROR: RMS namedrop enacted in pro-patenting context
This is not new. Ever hear of OpenVMS? (Score:2)
"What does 'open' mean in hardware?" (Score:2)
Simple: patent-free, or at least patent-unencumbered. Hardware development is
such a minefield of patents that no small player can seriously participate
without getting big allies. Of course, there are many other reasons why
small players would have a hard time, patents are only one. But they are
determinant: a patent-laden "open" hardware spec is not really open. You
either have freedom or you don't, the rest is mere nuance.
Patants and royalties (Score:1)
If you want to use something like CANbus or I2C you have to pay royalties.
Even MUX'es have to be paid (to generate data/strobe signals in high speed serial lines)
So, Code is free; but if you want to sell it you have to pay royalties.
Introduction to The Free Hardware Design movement (Score:2)
About a year ago, I wrote an introduction for free software writers to hardware design and the Free Hardware Design movement for a course on Free Software philosophy, theory, legal frameworks and politics held at Gothenburg University, Sweden. The article will later be published in a book together with some other articles written by other students at the course.
It is of course available online, at http://redhog.org/Projects/School/FreeSoftware/fre ehardware.pdf [redhog.org].
Re:"show me the code" (Score:4, Informative)
Re:"show me the code" (Score:1, Interesting)
Uh, the license to OpenOffice.org is LGPL, something the slashdot crowd usually is okay with. Your statement could be interpreted as implying there is something wrong with CDDL; if you believe so, you should state it.
Regarding UltraSparc III and IV, those are older designs and aren't particularly interesting. In fact, they're probably less useful than the the CoolThreads design, because there are a bunch of other Sun-ish things it assumes exist (MP cores are far more about cache coherency and chipset th
Re:"show me the code" (Score:2)
What a load of uninformed tosh! Sun has been a big team player for years, you only have to look through the RFC's [rfcsearch.org] to see how much work they've done. Further the most recent thing standard they've worked on was the XML specification, Jon Bosak (a Sun guy) led the creation of it at W3C.
Re:"show me the code" (Score:1)
Re:"show me the code" (Score:1)
Ever wondered why Linux is rather Solaris like ????
Highly amusing. Last time anyone counted Sun had contributed more code to the RedHat distribution than any other entity except FSF.
I rather like the idea of people who don't think that Sun's OpenSource contributions matter being made to remove all Sun's donated code from their Linux distribitions because Linux would cease to exist at least for them.