4 ms·

The part that perplexes me about this -- about the open source fundamentalists with whom I share quite a few views -- is that they ceded control of the base lay

The part that perplexes me about this -- about the open source fundamentalists with whom I share quite a few views -- is that they ceded control of the base layer half a century ago and never talk about it. No matter how open our software, it still runs on hardware which we can't build. No matter how open the HDL of that hardware, it has to be manufactured on a process we can't replicate. I really want to see more people focus their energy into building an enthusiast-friendly fab. The idea alone gets so readily dismissed because people focus on how extreme top-end fabs are without considering that there might be alternatives if your priorities/requirements were different. But I think it'll still happen, some day. Free the base layer! Make open source eternal!

pjmlp 6y ago
I stoped paying attention when those fundamentalist started buying Apple hardware to develop GNU/Linux software.
rcxdude 6y ago
While it would be cool, such a project is ridiculously far from practical and certainly would not result in anything usable for most purposes. Silicon fabrication is intrinsicly a slow, high-investment process which only pays off if you can get enough volume. There's little room for an open-source approach to this kind of industry (where's our open source HVAC?).
- wallacoloo 6y ago
  You make a lot of assumptions, maybe without even noticing you've made them. Silicon + CMOS happens to be one really high-performing combination. But it's not the only possible platform for computation. The past has seen us through vacuum tubes, magnetic core memory (and its cousin, magnetic logic), TTL (or resistor/transistor logic if you want to reduce the process steps), and through to modern MOSFET-based technologies. Along with each transition are numerous other computational platforms which didn't catch on -- usually because they didn't optimize for the things which the market demanded (e.g. perf, power, yield, and cost at volume). Among all the possible platforms for logic, it's hard for me to imagine that there's not at least one which has properties usable for at least some set of applications by enthusiasts.

pjmlp 6y ago

I stoped paying attention when those fundamentalist started buying Apple hardware to develop GNU/Linux software.

rcxdude 6y ago

While it would be cool, such a project is ridiculously far from practical and certainly would not result in anything usable for most purposes. Silicon fabrication is intrinsicly a slow, high-investment process which only pays off if you can get enough volume. There's little room for an open-source approach to this kind of industry (where's our open source HVAC?).

wallacoloo 6y ago
You make a lot of assumptions, maybe without even noticing you've made them. Silicon + CMOS happens to be one really high-performing combination. But it's not the only possible platform for computation. The past has seen us through vacuum tubes, magnetic core memory (and its cousin, magnetic logic), TTL (or resistor/transistor logic if you want to reduce the process steps), and through to modern MOSFET-based technologies. Along with each transition are numerous other computational platforms which didn't catch on -- usually because they didn't optimize for the things which the market demanded (e.g. perf, power, yield, and cost at volume). Among all the possible platforms for logic, it's hard for me to imagine that there's not at least one which has properties usable for at least some set of applications by enthusiasts.