5 ms·

This is amazing. I think the main reason why open source has taken off is because access to a computer is available to many people, and as cost is negligible,

by est31 6y ago

This is amazing. I think the main reason why open source has taken off is because access to a computer is available to many people, and as cost is negligible, it only required free time and enough dedication + skill to be successful. For hardware though, each compile/edit/run cycle costs money, software often has 5-digit per seat licenses, and thus the number of people with enough resources to pursue this as a hobby is quite small. Reduce the entry cost to affordable levels, and you have increased the number of people dramatically. Which is btw also why I believe that "you can buy 32 core threadripper cpus today" isn't a good argument to ignore large compilation overhead in a code base. If possible, enable people to contribute from potatoes. Relatedly, if possible, don't require gigabit internet connections either, so downloading megabytes of precompiled artifacts that change daily isn't great either.

andy_ppp 6y ago
Sounds like there should be open source software for such a thing? I bet the software for laying out transistors and so on will suddenly become viable with something like this, good idea Google!
- orbifold 6y ago
  There is open source software, a good overview is on http://opencircuitdesign.com/qflow/index.html http://opencircuitdesign.com/qflow/index.html.
  - andy_ppp 6y ago
    Ripe for some innovation maybe...
fhssn1 6y ago
I believe you're talking about the EDA toolchain. Even though it has a long history of open-source attempts, as pointed out by Tim in his presentation, they are few and far between, and massively underwhelming compared to the thriving open source software community. However, if this initiative takes off, it'll be a big help in creating an open source EDA toolchain community.
- gchadwick 6y ago
  > However, if this initiative takes off, it'll be a big help in creating an open source EDA toolchain community. The opensource EDA toolchain community is already producing some good stuff, Symbiflow: https://symbiflow.github.io/ https://symbiflow.github.io/ is a good example, it's an open source FPGA flow targeting multiple devices. It uses Yosys (http://www.clifford.at/yosys/ http://www.clifford.at/yosys/) as a synthesis tool which is also used by the OpenROAD flow: https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenROAD-flow https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenROAD-flow which aims to give push-button RTL to GDS (i.e. take you from Verilog, which is one of the main languages used in hardware to the thing you give to the foundry as a design for them to produce). The Skywater PDK is a great development, which is a key part of a healthy opensource EDA ecosystem though there's plenty of other great developments happening in parallel with it you will note there's some people who are involved in several of these projects they're not all being developed in isolation. The next set of talks on the Skywater PDK include how OpenROAD can be used to target Skywater: https://fossi-foundation.org/dial-up/ https://fossi-foundation.org/dial-up/
mhh__ 6y ago
Not only is the software expensive it's often crap. By which I don't mean, oh no it doesn't look nice - crap as in productivity-harming. For example, Altium Designer is probably the most modern (not most powerful although close) PCB suite and yet despite costing thousands a seat it is a slow, clunky, single-threaded (in 2020) program (somehow uses 20% of a 7700k at 4.6GHz with an empty design). Discord also thinks that Altium Designer is some kind of Anime MMO
- stjo 6y ago
  > Discord also thinks that Altium Designer is some kind of Anime MMO Hardly Altium Designer's fault, but I too would avoid using it.
- pantalaimon 6y ago
  KiCad nightly can now import Altium Design files, might want to give it a try ;) https://kicad-pcb.org/blog/2020/04/Development-Highlight-Altium-Pcb-Importer/ https://kicad-pcb.org/blog/2020/04/Development-Highlight-Alt...
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    KiCad is getting very good but it requires a lot of work to compete with the big boys - for example there's no signal integrity built in, and impedance control is fairly detached from your board i.e. I don't think you can do RC on impedance control yet. I don't need a huge amount but signal integrity is fairly important for the project I'm designing.
- imtringued 6y ago
  From what I can tell a lot of parametric design software is also single threaded. I felt like this is was an opportunity where usage of multiple cores could make Freecad stand out a little bit. Except Freecad uses opencascade as their kernel and they require you to sign a CLA just to download the git repository. Considering that barrier to just cloning the code I just decided to not contribute anything. They do offer zip file downloads of the source code but at that point I lost interest.
hamandcheese 6y ago
Very similar to what you just said, I suspect that a driving factor in the state of open source in hardware is that anyone working in hardware almost be definition has a large corporate backing, since producing hardware is so capital intensive (compared to software). If that is basically a given, why publish anything for free, when you can instead charge 10k/seat in licensing?
- devit 6y ago
  Possibly because initially the open source software will be significantly worse than the proprietary software and thus won't get any sales, and it will only be better with a lot of contributions, but then it's already freely available and so it still won't get any sales (but might get support/SaaS contracts).

by est31 6y ago

andy_ppp 6y ago

Sounds like there should be open source software for such a thing? I bet the software for laying out transistors and so on will suddenly become viable with something like this, good idea Google!

orbifold 6y ago
There is open source software, a good overview is on http://opencircuitdesign.com/qflow/index.html http://opencircuitdesign.com/qflow/index.html.
- andy_ppp 6y ago
  Ripe for some innovation maybe...

fhssn1 6y ago

I believe you're talking about the EDA toolchain. Even though it has a long history of open-source attempts, as pointed out by Tim in his presentation, they are few and far between, and massively underwhelming compared to the thriving open source software community. However, if this initiative takes off, it'll be a big help in creating an open source EDA toolchain community.

gchadwick 6y ago
> However, if this initiative takes off, it'll be a big help in creating an open source EDA toolchain community. The opensource EDA toolchain community is already producing some good stuff, Symbiflow: https://symbiflow.github.io/ https://symbiflow.github.io/ is a good example, it's an open source FPGA flow targeting multiple devices. It uses Yosys (http://www.clifford.at/yosys/ http://www.clifford.at/yosys/) as a synthesis tool which is also used by the OpenROAD flow: https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenROAD-flow https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenROAD-flow which aims to give push-button RTL to GDS (i.e. take you from Verilog, which is one of the main languages used in hardware to the thing you give to the foundry as a design for them to produce). The Skywater PDK is a great development, which is a key part of a healthy opensource EDA ecosystem though there's plenty of other great developments happening in parallel with it you will note there's some people who are involved in several of these projects they're not all being developed in isolation. The next set of talks on the Skywater PDK include how OpenROAD can be used to target Skywater: https://fossi-foundation.org/dial-up/ https://fossi-foundation.org/dial-up/

mhh__ 6y ago

Not only is the software expensive it's often crap. By which I don't mean, oh no it doesn't look nice - crap as in productivity-harming. For example, Altium Designer is probably the most modern (not most powerful although close) PCB suite and yet despite costing thousands a seat it is a slow, clunky, single-threaded (in 2020) program (somehow uses 20% of a 7700k at 4.6GHz with an empty design). Discord also thinks that Altium Designer is some kind of Anime MMO

stjo 6y ago
> Discord also thinks that Altium Designer is some kind of Anime MMO Hardly Altium Designer's fault, but I too would avoid using it.
pantalaimon 6y ago
KiCad nightly can now import Altium Design files, might want to give it a try ;) https://kicad-pcb.org/blog/2020/04/Development-Highlight-Altium-Pcb-Importer/ https://kicad-pcb.org/blog/2020/04/Development-Highlight-Alt...
- mhh__ 6y ago
  KiCad is getting very good but it requires a lot of work to compete with the big boys - for example there's no signal integrity built in, and impedance control is fairly detached from your board i.e. I don't think you can do RC on impedance control yet. I don't need a huge amount but signal integrity is fairly important for the project I'm designing.
imtringued 6y ago
From what I can tell a lot of parametric design software is also single threaded. I felt like this is was an opportunity where usage of multiple cores could make Freecad stand out a little bit. Except Freecad uses opencascade as their kernel and they require you to sign a CLA just to download the git repository. Considering that barrier to just cloning the code I just decided to not contribute anything. They do offer zip file downloads of the source code but at that point I lost interest.

hamandcheese 6y ago

Very similar to what you just said, I suspect that a driving factor in the state of open source in hardware is that anyone working in hardware almost be definition has a large corporate backing, since producing hardware is so capital intensive (compared to software). If that is basically a given, why publish anything for free, when you can instead charge 10k/seat in licensing?

devit 6y ago
Possibly because initially the open source software will be significantly worse than the proprietary software and thus won't get any sales, and it will only be better with a lot of contributions, but then it's already freely available and so it still won't get any sales (but might get support/SaaS contracts).