I've been reading some of the threads about the GPL, and binary-only
drivers, and I'm suprised that nobody has brought up open source
hardware, (or rather, the lack of it).
Open source hardware more or less sidesteps the whole issue of
closed-source drivers - an open source driver would be so easy to
write with all the specifications available that there would be very
little point in writing a closed-source driver.
At the moment there is not very much open source hardware, and what
does exist is generally peripherals, and not things like CPUs, but I
expect this will change soon, mainly because it would be easy to
develop a cheap, and simple CPU that is designed for multi-processor
use from the beginning.
This means that each CPU would be cheap and easy to produce, (simple
design = high yeild from each wafer, and mass production = low cost
per unit). Typical machines would have several orders of magnitude
more processors than those of conventional design, (E.G. 4 to 16 for a
desktop), but they would be far cheaper, because anybody would be free
to fabricate the CPUs.
So, basically, the idea is to design a low-cost,
low-computational-power CPU, which works well in multi-processor
configurations, and make the specification open source. Anybody could
make the processors, and building a machine of a given computational
power would be cheaper using them than using conventional CPUs.
I personally expect to see this within 10 years.
John.
On Thu, Jan 16, 2003 at 05:11:20PM +0000, John Bradford wrote:
> I've been reading some of the threads about the GPL, and binary-only
> drivers, and I'm suprised that nobody has brought up open source
> hardware, (or rather, the lack of it).
[...]
> So, basically, the idea is to design a low-cost,
> low-computational-power CPU, which works well in multi-processor
> configurations, and make the specification open source. Anybody could
> make the processors, and building a machine of a given computational
> power would be cheaper using them than using conventional CPUs.
>
> I personally expect to see this within 10 years.
You're behind the times :)
http://www.opencores.org/
http://www.opencores.org
John Bradford wrote:
> I've been reading some of the threads about the GPL, and binary-only
> drivers, and I'm suprised that nobody has brought up open source
> hardware, (or rather, the lack of it).
>
> > I've been reading some of the threads about the GPL, and binary-only
> > drivers, and I'm suprised that nobody has brought up open source
> > hardware, (or rather, the lack of it).
> [...]
> > So, basically, the idea is to design a low-cost,
> > low-computational-power CPU, which works well in multi-processor
> > configurations, and make the specification open source. Anybody could
> > make the processors, and building a machine of a given computational
> > power would be cheaper using them than using conventional CPUs.
> >
> > I personally expect to see this within 10 years.
>
> You're behind the times :)
>
> http://www.opencores.org/
Interesting - I'd only seen open source CPU projects which were at the
planning stage.
It seems that most of the components necessary to build a usable
machine are at least well-advanced, although most of the non-CPU parts
are based around the WISHBONE interface, whereare most of the CPUs are
not, so maybe the goal is further away than it first appears, but
still, progress is being made.
Do you know of anybody who has actually made a prototype board from
any of these CPU designs? Is my idea of running a lot of simple CPUs
together fundamentally flawed, or is it possible to overcome the
inefficiencies of SMP, if the CPUs are designed for it from the ground
up?
To be honest I am really begining to get bored with i386-based
systems, and I'm hoping to move away from them entirely at the
earliest opportunity. Hopefully I'll be building my next machine
around an UltraSPARC, but I've really been a bit too busy with other
projects lately...
John.
On Thu, 16 Jan 2003 17:11:20 +0000 (GMT)
John Bradford <[email protected]> wrote:
> I've been reading some of the threads about the GPL, and binary-only
> drivers, and I'm suprised that nobody has brought up open source
> hardware, (or rather, the lack of it).
>
> Open source hardware more or less sidesteps the whole issue of
> closed-source drivers - an open source driver would be so easy to
> write with all the specifications available that there would be very
> little point in writing a closed-source driver.
>
> At the moment there is not very much open source hardware, and what
> does exist is generally peripherals, and not things like CPUs, but I
> expect this will change soon, mainly because it would be easy to
> develop a cheap, and simple CPU that is designed for multi-processor
> use from the beginning.
Hmm, cpu design is never simple, that is why big companies pay huge money to
highly educated professionals to work for them in designing CPUs.
>
> This means that each CPU would be cheap and easy to produce, (simple
> design = high yeild from each wafer, and mass production = low cost
> per unit). Typical machines would have several orders of magnitude
> more processors than those of conventional design, (E.G. 4 to 16 for a
> desktop), but they would be far cheaper, because anybody would be free
> to fabricate the CPUs.
Cheap, simple CPUs, and multiple of those? Like transputers? Ohw, those were
not that simple it turned out, they were designed ground up to work in
multiprocessor environments. They were not that relyable either, about 1 in
17 would for some reason not work after a power-down, luckily, it was not
determined which one that would be, hot spare CPU's were the answer. ;-)
>
> So, basically, the idea is to design a low-cost,
> low-computational-power CPU, which works well in multi-processor
> configurations, and make the specification open source. Anybody could
> make the processors, and building a machine of a given computational
> power would be cheaper using them than using conventional CPUs.
>
> I personally expect to see this within 10 years.
>
I personally expect not to see this in the next 10 years. Nobody bothers to
build smp 68040 boxes currently, this is a cheap (relatively), easy to use,
multiprocessor capable cpu. Why not? well, on big PPC is a lot easier on the
hardware, a lot faster and in the end, a lot cheaper.
> John.
> -
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Oh, BTW remember the Apple ][? One could get all hardware docs for that
bocs, schematics for the entire circuit, the works. That made it very easy
to build clones, and some people did that, turned out, those were not much
cheaper that apple's original box....
--
Met vriendelijke groeten,
Remco Post
SARA - Stichting Academisch Rekencentrum Amsterdam http://www.sara.nl
High Performance Computing Tel. +31 20 592 8008 Fax. +31 20 668 3167
"I really didn't foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer
industry. Not that that tells us very much of course - the computer industry
didn't even foresee that the century was going to end." -- Douglas Adams
> Oh, BTW remember the Apple ][? One could get all hardware docs for that
> bocs, schematics for the entire circuit, the works. That made it very easy
> to build clones, and some people did that, turned out, those were not much
> cheaper that apple's original box....
Yeah, the docs were on fold-out sheets at the back of the manual! I
think I even had schematics for the floppy disk controllers. the
Apple ][ was a really nice machine - I remember I had, (infact, still
have, although I haven't powered it on for around 10 years!), the
following peripherals in mine:
Slot 0 - Language card
Slot 1 - 16K RAM card
Slot 2 - Empty
Slot 3 - Z80 processor
Slot 4 - Third disk controller
Slot 5 - Second disk controller
Slot 6 - First disk controller
Slot 7 - PAL encoder
I only had four floppy drives, so the third disk controller was never
used. I didn't have an 80-column card, nor a serial interface :-(,
but I did have *** 96K *** of RAM!!! Truely the power of a mainframe
on the desktop... Almost.
John.
John Bradford <[email protected]> writes:
> Do you know of anybody who has actually made a prototype board from
> any of these CPU designs? Is my idea of running a lot of simple CPUs
> together fundamentally flawed, or is it possible to overcome the
> inefficiencies of SMP, if the CPUs are designed for it from the ground
> up?
The fundamental problem is not inefficiencies of SMP. But rather
there are some tasks that simply do not parallelize well. Big
supercomputer kinds of applications that require a lot of number
crunching usually benefit from multiple cpus. But small every day
applications don't. The only applications that scale perfectly with
the number of cpus are the embarrassingly parallel ones, in which no
communication is involved between the various subtasks.
This is not to say an elegant design might not get there, AMD is
trying for that. But simple brute force will certainly not get you
there.
Eric