3 ms·

Well the barriers are pretty low today. Even fairly small companies like Axis (they make security cameras) or ubiquiti (routers and access points) can work wit

by sliken 7y ago

Well the barriers are pretty low today. Even fairly small companies like Axis (they make security cameras) or ubiquiti (routers and access points) can work with CPU vendors to license their tech and get a custom CPU. With an opensource IP the barrier will be even lower. Maybe even within a well funded kickstarter range. Maybe for a killer home router with a 100% open hardware+software platform that can route 8 ports of 5Gbit/port at line speed that would more trusted than random commodity hardware. Or something to handle say 8 security cameras and use machine learning to handle all 8 streams for not just motion detection, but also identifying what person/object is in each stream. I'd certainly pay a premium for smart devices in my home that I knew that I could trust, wasn't spying on me, doesn't require cloud connections, used open APIs/standards, and wouldn't die with the next time a company dies, gets bored, gets greedy, get purchased, etc.

tomasato 7y ago
I’m curious about the ubiquiti custom CPU, can you share a link to more info ? Thanks
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  "Custom CPU" seems like a bit of a stretch. They have ASIC people on staff (eg https://rocketreach.co/ya-chau-yang-email_61973123 https://rocketreach.co/ya-chau-yang-email_61973123), but based on the fact that you can flash basically all their devices with OpenWRT (including those disc-shaped APs), I think the "ASIC" is just a conventional ARM or MIPS core with some peripherals geared toward hardware acceleration of common network tasks— switch routing, vlan tagging, etc. This page talks about the specific features available for hardware offloading: https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/115006567467-EdgeRouter-Hardware-Offloading https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/115006567467-EdgeRou...
l33tman 7y ago
This is not accurate, Axis is NOT a small company by any standards, they have done ASICs since the 1980's and a tape-out there now is in the $10M range or more I'm sure, and then we're talking about the same amount in salaries to do all design and testing. It's fun to have access to HDL code but it's simply not possible to actually turn it into chips as an OSS effort. FPGA-stuff is the way to go I think. The HW cost will be much higher but you can muck around with it as a lone engineer in your home with a turnaround time of minutes.

by sliken 7y ago

tomasato 7y ago

I’m curious about the ubiquiti custom CPU, can you share a link to more info ? Thanks

mikepurvis 7y ago
"Custom CPU" seems like a bit of a stretch. They have ASIC people on staff (eg https://rocketreach.co/ya-chau-yang-email_61973123 https://rocketreach.co/ya-chau-yang-email_61973123), but based on the fact that you can flash basically all their devices with OpenWRT (including those disc-shaped APs), I think the "ASIC" is just a conventional ARM or MIPS core with some peripherals geared toward hardware acceleration of common network tasks— switch routing, vlan tagging, etc. This page talks about the specific features available for hardware offloading: https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/115006567467-EdgeRouter-Hardware-Offloading https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/115006567467-EdgeRou...

l33tman 7y ago

This is not accurate, Axis is NOT a small company by any standards, they have done ASICs since the 1980's and a tape-out there now is in the $10M range or more I'm sure, and then we're talking about the same amount in salaries to do all design and testing. It's fun to have access to HDL code but it's simply not possible to actually turn it into chips as an OSS effort. FPGA-stuff is the way to go I think. The HW cost will be much higher but you can muck around with it as a lone engineer in your home with a turnaround time of minutes.