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It's really unfortunate that hardware vendors are obsessed with shipping closed source firmware and ROM. Fortunately there's been a slow and steady buildup of p

It's really unfortunate that hardware vendors are obsessed with shipping closed source firmware and ROM. Fortunately there's been a slow and steady buildup of pressure as open source has started being pushed lower into the stacks. Great to see Oxide Computers pushing on this. The rest of the NXP software stack is pretty open. Overall the LPC55S69 chips are pretty impressive chips! They have dual cores with plenty of 16 bit ADC's and 16 bit DAC's built in, which is amazing. With good platform support from Arduino, Zephyr, etc it means you can get high quality signals in a single chip, and have two cores to process the data (one for real time data, the other for communications and controls).

varispeed 6y ago
If they shipped with open source firmware, you would have a number of companies copying it and using in their products undercutting the original manufacturer. The US and the West don't have teeth when it comes to IP violations in Asia.
- detaro 6y ago
  If you can't do anything against IP violations, closed source doesn't exactly protect you from clones (the range of reverse engineering/firmware extraction services available is impressive). It'll slow them down, but also gets in the way of your legit customers.
  - varispeed 6y ago
    That is true, but without source code the violators cannot improve "their" products much nor give any meaningful updates, so the original manufacturer can still have an edge. If sources were available, the violators could even make it better than original, without having to make even remotely the same R&D investment than original manufacturer.
    - elcritch 6y ago
      Not sure this applies much for the ROM's on microcontroller. They're pretty small and mostly handle very low level details so there doesn't seem much space for meaningful improvement. Even when the firmware is completely open, the original firm often maintains a competitive edge because they have the know how to work with the code base and rest of the chip. Ideally they have internal simulation tools, a broad range of expertise, etc. The firmware often doesn't contain as much "secret sauce", but does contains lots of possible vulnerabilities or bugs for customers.

varispeed 6y ago

If they shipped with open source firmware, you would have a number of companies copying it and using in their products undercutting the original manufacturer. The US and the West don't have teeth when it comes to IP violations in Asia.

detaro 6y ago
If you can't do anything against IP violations, closed source doesn't exactly protect you from clones (the range of reverse engineering/firmware extraction services available is impressive). It'll slow them down, but also gets in the way of your legit customers.
- varispeed 6y ago
  That is true, but without source code the violators cannot improve "their" products much nor give any meaningful updates, so the original manufacturer can still have an edge. If sources were available, the violators could even make it better than original, without having to make even remotely the same R&D investment than original manufacturer.
  - elcritch 6y ago
    Not sure this applies much for the ROM's on microcontroller. They're pretty small and mostly handle very low level details so there doesn't seem much space for meaningful improvement. Even when the firmware is completely open, the original firm often maintains a competitive edge because they have the know how to work with the code base and rest of the chip. Ideally they have internal simulation tools, a broad range of expertise, etc. The firmware often doesn't contain as much "secret sauce", but does contains lots of possible vulnerabilities or bugs for customers.