4 ms·

It’s so surreal that people in the FPGA industry refer to libraries/components as “Intellectual Property”.

by davemp 8y ago

kurthr 8y ago
I think it's because so many of them are sold/licensed that way. You buy an Arm core, an Ethernet, USB or BT interface, etc. Often you do it from your EDA (electronic design automation) vendor so that it fits into your design/test/layout flow. Even the ones you don't pay for often can't be redistributed. Lots of them are literally black box or "hard" IPs that you can't change or test except through defined interfaces... but they often have been validated much more than anything you can write and may be much smaller or lower power than you would naively write.
- davemp 8y ago
  I would attribute the weird FPGA dev attitudes to Stockholm syndrome. I always get the most mind boggling replies in defense of the evil vendors when I criticize FPGA’s embarrassingly small amount of freedom. > [black box components] often have been validated much more than anything you can write and may be much smaller or lower power than you would naively write. Sure but if an entire community was validating and improving these common components, they’d be way better still. (See gcc/llvm, linux, git, etc).
  - krupan 8y ago
    You are absolutely correct. Keep fighting the good fight :-)
  - genericone 8y ago
    Hardware validation is like hardware startups, much harder to do. With software, all you need is a computer, time, and will. With hardware, your toolchains have a material cost, a calibration cost, shipping cost, shipping schedules, in addition to a computer, time, and will. If you screw up your equipment or prototype, thats at least another week or month of waiting for replacement parts. Software is like music, as long as the instrument is works, all you need is time and will to develop/create.
    - vmchale 8y ago
      Yup. If you have an engineer who's paid $100 000 a year with three weeks vacation, that's 407.05 a day. It starts to make sense that you'd buy $4000 IP for an Ethernet core, unless by some ungodly powers they can write that in less than 10 days.
      - davemp 8y ago
        If you have an engineer who's paid $100 000 a year with three weeks vacation, that's 407.05 a day. It starts to make sense that you'd buy $4000 IP for an operating system, unless by some ungodly powers they can write that in less than 10 days.
        forgottenpass 8y ago
        I see what you're trying to say, but the analogy doesn't exactly work. Everyone still uses a COTS operating systems because the cost of building one from scratch is so high. We're lucky that the market provides multiple free options, but if it didn't the rational business move for most projects would be to license one.
        vmchale 8y ago
        It's also worth noting that are clear examples of closed-source software that essentially acted like malware. I've not heard of any such examples with IP cores.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - davemp 8y ago
      This is ignoring the major part of hardware development that is actually just non-free software tooling.
      - eldavido 8y ago
        This whole thread is frankly, so dumb. One of my best friends is a SoC designer at Apple and we talk about this stuff all the time. First thing people need to understand: this whole world operates at scale. You don't bother making an ASIC unless you really need one -- you're either making millions/hundreds of millions of them, or the individual application is so high-value that the hassle, complexity, and expense of moving off a general-purpose CPU onto something completely custom is worth it. Second, 4K is chump change. You need an entire team of people to do anything meaningful with FPGAs/ASICs. Less than that, just buy a $100 CPU that will do more, be immediately available, and have an entire software stack (OS, user-space programs, compilers, etc) for it. And teams that know how to build this stuff well cost MONEY. A lot of it. Not $100K/year. More like $250-300K minimum per person at Silicon Valley rates. I get that the OP wants to do this as a sort of hobbyist undertaking, just realize, he's cutting against the grain of the entire ecosystem. Everything about this stuff is made for huge companies to do massive projects that will ship at gargantuan scale. Not hobbyists in a garage. The major part of hardware development is NOT tooling. It is manufacturing the hardware.
  - vmchale 8y ago
    > I would attribute the weird FPGA dev attitudes to Stockholm syndrome. I always get the most mind boggling replies in defense of the evil vendors when I criticize FPGA’s embarrassingly small amount of freedom. I'm not sure you understand FPGA development. Until FPGA manufacturers do something like software vendors where they bundle actual malware with the closed-source hardware they sell, it doesn't really bother me. Personally, I kind of prefer having detailed documentation of a black box rather than trying to read source code. The latter is all too common in software development.
    - davemp 8y ago
      I have multiple FPGA designs in use today. What does or doesn’t bother you is irrelevant. I don’t really care to explain the obvious net win that open source designs (and tools) are for society. The only argument I’d consider reasonable is that the FPGA/hardware world is too small to justify the initial investment.
  - sfifs 8y ago
    > when I criticize FPGA’s embarrassingly small amount of freedom. It takes a critical mass of knowledgeable people who don't necessarily want to be compensated monetarily for their efforts for this to happen (think early GCC and Linux teams). It took a few decades of largely unpaid effort before GCC and Linux convincingly took over as the leading compiler and OS respectively and people started being paid to work on them. To achieve the end you have in mind, you will need to start building that community
- altrus 8y ago
  Writing robust cores is usually substantially harder than writing the equivalent software library. You usually have to design the logic to satisfy various different criteria (area, performance, or power), and, especially when implementing high speed design, take into account the targeted device. Unfortunately, the number of people who are competent to design, test, and implement these cores is fairly small, and usually well funded. Oftentimes, these cores represent very non-trivial time savings, especially when it comes to characterizing performance and closing timing, so there is tremendous value in the marketing and selling of these cores. On the other hand, sites like opencores are great for finding useful IP that people have contributed and may be adapted to your device.

It’s so surreal that people in the FPGA industry refer to libraries/components as “Intellectual Property”.

by davemp 8y ago

It’s so surreal that people in the FPGA industry refer to libraries/components as “Intellectual Property”.

I think it's because so many of them are sold/licensed that way. You buy an Arm core, an Ethernet, USB or BT interface, etc. Often you do it from your EDA (electronic design automation) vendor so that it fits into your design/test/layout flow. Even the ones you don't pay for often can't be redistributed. Lots of them are literally black box or "hard" IPs that you can't change or test except through defined interfaces... but they often have been validated much more than anything you can write and may be much smaller or lower power than you would naively write.

davemp 8y ago
I would attribute the weird FPGA dev attitudes to Stockholm syndrome. I always get the most mind boggling replies in defense of the evil vendors when I criticize FPGA’s embarrassingly small amount of freedom. > [black box components] often have been validated much more than anything you can write and may be much smaller or lower power than you would naively write. Sure but if an entire community was validating and improving these common components, they’d be way better still. (See gcc/llvm, linux, git, etc).
- krupan 8y ago
  You are absolutely correct. Keep fighting the good fight :-)
- genericone 8y ago
  Hardware validation is like hardware startups, much harder to do. With software, all you need is a computer, time, and will. With hardware, your toolchains have a material cost, a calibration cost, shipping cost, shipping schedules, in addition to a computer, time, and will. If you screw up your equipment or prototype, thats at least another week or month of waiting for replacement parts. Software is like music, as long as the instrument is works, all you need is time and will to develop/create.
  - vmchale 8y ago
    Yup. If you have an engineer who's paid $100 000 a year with three weeks vacation, that's 407.05 a day. It starts to make sense that you'd buy $4000 IP for an Ethernet core, unless by some ungodly powers they can write that in less than 10 days.
    - davemp 8y ago
      If you have an engineer who's paid $100 000 a year with three weeks vacation, that's 407.05 a day. It starts to make sense that you'd buy $4000 IP for an operating system, unless by some ungodly powers they can write that in less than 10 days.
      - forgottenpass 8y ago
        I see what you're trying to say, but the analogy doesn't exactly work. Everyone still uses a COTS operating systems because the cost of building one from scratch is so high. We're lucky that the market provides multiple free options, but if it didn't the rational business move for most projects would be to license one.
        vmchale 8y ago
        It's also worth noting that are clear examples of closed-source software that essentially acted like malware. I've not heard of any such examples with IP cores.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
  - davemp 8y ago
    This is ignoring the major part of hardware development that is actually just non-free software tooling.
    - eldavido 8y ago
      This whole thread is frankly, so dumb. One of my best friends is a SoC designer at Apple and we talk about this stuff all the time. First thing people need to understand: this whole world operates at scale. You don't bother making an ASIC unless you really need one -- you're either making millions/hundreds of millions of them, or the individual application is so high-value that the hassle, complexity, and expense of moving off a general-purpose CPU onto something completely custom is worth it. Second, 4K is chump change. You need an entire team of people to do anything meaningful with FPGAs/ASICs. Less than that, just buy a $100 CPU that will do more, be immediately available, and have an entire software stack (OS, user-space programs, compilers, etc) for it. And teams that know how to build this stuff well cost MONEY. A lot of it. Not $100K/year. More like $250-300K minimum per person at Silicon Valley rates. I get that the OP wants to do this as a sort of hobbyist undertaking, just realize, he's cutting against the grain of the entire ecosystem. Everything about this stuff is made for huge companies to do massive projects that will ship at gargantuan scale. Not hobbyists in a garage. The major part of hardware development is NOT tooling. It is manufacturing the hardware.
- vmchale 8y ago
  > I would attribute the weird FPGA dev attitudes to Stockholm syndrome. I always get the most mind boggling replies in defense of the evil vendors when I criticize FPGA’s embarrassingly small amount of freedom. I'm not sure you understand FPGA development. Until FPGA manufacturers do something like software vendors where they bundle actual malware with the closed-source hardware they sell, it doesn't really bother me. Personally, I kind of prefer having detailed documentation of a black box rather than trying to read source code. The latter is all too common in software development.
  - davemp 8y ago
    I have multiple FPGA designs in use today. What does or doesn’t bother you is irrelevant. I don’t really care to explain the obvious net win that open source designs (and tools) are for society. The only argument I’d consider reasonable is that the FPGA/hardware world is too small to justify the initial investment.
- sfifs 8y ago
  > when I criticize FPGA’s embarrassingly small amount of freedom. It takes a critical mass of knowledgeable people who don't necessarily want to be compensated monetarily for their efforts for this to happen (think early GCC and Linux teams). It took a few decades of largely unpaid effort before GCC and Linux convincingly took over as the leading compiler and OS respectively and people started being paid to work on them. To achieve the end you have in mind, you will need to start building that community
altrus 8y ago
Writing robust cores is usually substantially harder than writing the equivalent software library. You usually have to design the logic to satisfy various different criteria (area, performance, or power), and, especially when implementing high speed design, take into account the targeted device. Unfortunately, the number of people who are competent to design, test, and implement these cores is fairly small, and usually well funded. Oftentimes, these cores represent very non-trivial time savings, especially when it comes to characterizing performance and closing timing, so there is tremendous value in the marketing and selling of these cores. On the other hand, sites like opencores are great for finding useful IP that people have contributed and may be adapted to your device.