Open source software is mushrooming rapidly. In open source software the software is liberally licensed to grant the right of users to study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code. It offers several advantages, though they aren’t very obvious (Its widely discussed in literature). They are free, so no need for licensing issues. Being redistributable, they find greater market penetration. When specific requirements are needed, the source modified by the users to create a variant. This increases the market penetration of the product. The software evolves rapidly and hence sustains in the market for a much longer span than closed software. Also there isn’t any restriction as to stay locked to the same vendor.
With all this, now “open hardware” concept is permeating the planet earth. Like the source code of software, here the (almost) entire hardware design is ‘Open’. The design usually refers to the circuit schematic. It might also include the PCB Layout. With respect to the programmable hardware, design refers to the HDL code (and IP cores) of the design. That pretty much sums it all.
Though they are free, certain licenses are required to exert essential governance. Some are TAPR Open Hardware License, Balloon Open Hardware License, MIT license, GPL etc
Well, if you’ve been thinking that only those petty circuits that you see on magazines are the real Open Hardware, then read along.
No one, except INTEL itself, knows what’s inside PENTIUM Processors. Its closed. But a project by SUN Microsystems, called OpenSPARC is an open-source processor project. The processor is an multicore, multithreaded, 64 bit processor. The block diagram of UltramSPARC T2 a product of the OpenSPARC Project is shown below
“Open Graphics Project” is working on the development of an open architecture and standard for graphics cards. If it makes it big, then that’d be the day when we stop worrying about the whooping costs of GPUs. One of the GPU developed in this project is shown below.
Another interesting open source project, students might be interested in is the SunSPOT. It is an open source hardware and software platform for sensor networks and battery powered, wireless, embedded development. The hardware can be obtained from SUN. Several interesting codes (Java) too can be obtained from SUN. It has wireless interface and several interesting sensors inbuilt in it. There’s also provision to extend the hardware.
To increase the reach of windmills and to assist people in developing countries, ‘Small wind turbines’ has open sourced several windmill kinds.
Robotics was no exception, several robotic designs were open sourced – epuck, RobotCub, OpenRAVE etc. You can see the cute little RobotCub in the pic below
Open hardware has already founds its foundations in variegated fields from simple tools to huge machineries.
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