Open Source Hardware Approaching Critical Mass 64
angry tapir writes: The Open Compute Project, which wants to open up hardware the same way Linux opened up software, is starting to tackle its forklift problem. You can't download boxes or racks, so open-source hardware needs a supply chain, said OCP President and Chairman Frank Frankovsky, kicking off the Open Compute Project Summit in San Jose. The companies looking to adopt this kind of gear include some blue-chip names: Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Capital One are members. The idea is that if a lot of vendors build hardware to OCP specifications, IT departments will have more suppliers to choose from offering gear they can easily bring into their data centers. Standard hardware can also provide more platforms for innovative software, Frankovsky said. Now HP and other vendors are starting to deliver OCP systems in a way the average IT department understands. At the same time, the organization is taking steps to make sure new projects are commercially viable rather than just exercises in technology.
I knew I should never (Score:5, Funny)
Open Source Hardware Approaching Critical Mass
I knew I should never have tried 3d printing with plutonium.
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Open source therefore means Iran is 2 WEEKS from having the BOMB!
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Its not that 3D printers use Plutonium, its just that the cartridges cost as much as Plutonium.
Patenting (Score:5, Interesting)
With HW going open source, shall we now start hating HW patenting similar to how we hate SW patenting?
What is the fundamental difference between e.g. python and pyhdl http://pyhdl.net/ [pyhdl.net]?
Or have we (secretly) hated HW patenting all along, just as bad as SW patenting?
Or is it just the current setup of the patent system that is the problem?
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The people who invented patents are the problem. We need to get rid of them. Join the cult to build a doomsday machine with open source hardware and eradicate all humans. When it's done, so are they!
I'd aim at eradicating all life. It is not a huge step for some slime to evolve into patent lawyers.
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Ars Technica just published an excellent piece on Microsoft's contribution to Open-Source data center designs: http://arstechnica.com/informa... [arstechnica.com]
If the Facebook's and Microsoft's of the world are being so proactive in this space, it'll only be a matter of time until their lawyer's get to work. That's what they're there for, right? Gotta do something to keep earning those fat retainers.
Re: Patenting (Score:1)
You shouldn't ban patented algorithms. After all, they are used together with systemd by foxconn for their robots.
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we aren't hating on people doing hw patenting?
most hw patents nowadays are pretty dang trivial or "obvious to people in the trade" - done essentially as copyrighting excercises rather than as disclosure of vital information how the patented device works. furthermore, the same patents don't have enough information to replicate the device anyhow. a modern day car patent wouldn't describe how the car moves and steers but instead would describe that it has chairs to sit in.
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Or have we (secretly) hated HW patenting all along, just as bad as SW patenting? Or is it just the current setup of the patent system that is the problem?
HW patenting isn't as bad. Let me illustrate: The PAL tv colour circuitry had essential patents, many owned by Telefunken. The Japanese competitors could not use these patents in their equipment, so they developed ways around the patents, and, ultimately, better televisions. Unless you're breaking new ground, you can only get a patent to cover direct copies of your device in hardware. One company slavishly copied the day/night car mirror design of another. I worked briefly for the copyists, and their legal
Open source hardware? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Open source hardware? (Score:5, Informative)
The Open Compute Project doesn't really care, certainly not enough to compromise the list of vendors willing to work with them; about your PCB layouts, or your firmware code, or your mask rights; but they are very clear that they don't want to pay for your fancy proprietary blade chassis, or get locked into your 'management ecosystem' with your vendor-specific LOM card and management dashboard: they want servers that comply with mechanical and electrical standards that make them interchangeable, and support specific(usually fairly bare-bones; but standard across vendors) hardware management interfaces. They don't care how you do that, or what is inside your box, they just want your box to slot into their infrastructure, rather than attempting to dictate it.
They definitely aren't 'open hardware' in the GNU sense of 'open' as a moral imperative, and they are only weakly similar to 'open' in the OSS sense of 'open, because it has turned out to be a productive development model as well as allowing internal customization'. They are really much closer to discerning buyers of proprietary components: They don't really care how the black box works, you can keep your secrets if you want; but they want to be in control of what interfaces and features the black box requires and provides. Like buying a GPU: most customers don't care about the silicon, or the firmware, or even the drivers(so long as they are available and not a total pile of shit); but they definitely expect it to support OpenGL, and DirectX if on Windows.
Given that the Open Compute Project people are mostly large scale operators of servers, this focus isn't really a surprise: OEMs are already pretty good at silicon development(and you'd have to have very specific needs, or substantial talent and fab capability, to beat what you can get off the shelf), and they can fabricate sheet metal and design and stuff PCBs as efficiently as you'd expect given the brutal margins in the business; but (in part because of those brutal margins), they've historically tried to gain control over the customer at the interface/API layer. Their cheap crap simply won't promise, and often won't implement, any mechanical, airflow, electrical, or management interface standardization whatsoever(so even if bolting rack ears to consumer desktops seemed like a plan just crazy enough to work, even getting all of them to PXE boot might not happen); and their classy stuff is usually designed to work best when everything else in the datacenter is also purchased from them or their buddies.
The OCP and the companies it represents have little to gain by trying to displace the OEMs at building silicon or stuffing PCBs, they just want to change the game so that they call the shots on how the datacenter fits together, and OEMs compete to be chosen to build the interchangeable modules, rather than OEMs using partially or wholly proprietary interfaces in order to drive vendor lock in.
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They don't just want "Well, yeah, it's unique to my hardware and only really works with management consoles I've blessed; but it transfers all its blobs with totall
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So basically, it's the same thing as the original IBM PC.
Where IBM published the schematic diagrams and the source code in commented ASM for the BIOS chip ('poisoning' anybody who read that source code from being able to write a compatible BIOS and necessitating the 'clean room' approach). It was all available in the Technical Reference Manual which anybody could purchase (it was fairly expensive).
They published this same material, and used all COTS components, all the way up to the PC-AT.
Re: Open source hardware? (Score:2)
I actually saves of of those blue IBM PC Technical References from a garbage bin years ago when someone was cleaning out their office. I think that was also when I got my VAX assembly language guide. :)
Are there open source tools... (Score:1)
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Why fret about a supply chain when it can exist on (Score:1)
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You can buy tubes of ATmega chips for a fairly trivial amount, though, well below the cost for finished Arduino boards, and if you chose a through-hole version of the Arduino board, you can even use it like a 'development system' emulator and write all your code for the bare processor chip, use the board like a 'burner' for the chips and drop bare chips into your finished design;.
Re:Why fret about a supply chain when it can exist (Score:5, Informative)
When they say that they 'need a supply chain', it's because they are really only interested in partially killing off the traditional enterprise hardware vendor. Being able to call, say, Dell, order however many R730s, with the level of warranty support(from 'statutory minimum, if any, to '4+ years of on-site-within-4-hours) you want; and have them all show up, assembled as ordered, on the loading dock is extremely convenient. Practically essential if you don't want to set up an in-house whitebox assembly line.
They still want that sort of supplier service: call up, tell them what you want and what, if any, warranty you want, have them arrive at your door; but they want to standardize, as much as possible, hardware between vendors, so you would barely notice whether you are popping in HP, Dell, Supermicro, etc. modules, everything will just fit and they'll all report the same values and respond to the same commands from your management system.
That's more customer service than hobbyist procurement(which has its place, random pacific rim vendors on ebay have their quirks; but they sure are cheap, and often do have what you require); they just want to be able to get that logistics expertise; but decoupled from the traditional branded faceplates and ill-standardized LOM intefaces and various other delightful aspects of dealing with hardware vendors.
R5 (Score:3)
Perhaps this time they will get Robocop right!
Only to a point (Score:2)
Why open source hardware is not like software (Score:5, Informative)
The Open Compute Project, which wants to open up hardware the same way Linux opened up software, is starting to tackle its forklift problem.
That's not the important problem with open source hardware. Actually making hardware is a fairly straightforward, albeit costly, proposition. I should know since I run a manufacturing company. Give me a design and an adequate amount of cash and I can get any product made and delivered wherever you want it. That's not the real obstacle to open source hardware.
The important problem is that hardware is (generally) protected by patents whereas software is (generally) protected by copyright. It's easy to write a license (see GPL) that does useful things with copyright law for a product like software. It is highly non-trivial to do the same thing with patents for a product like hardware, especially under a first-to-file patent system. To accomplish something similar to the GPL or BSD license you would have to have someone spend the money to patent a technology and then make it available for community use AND be willing and able (read $$$) to fight to protect the community. This costs a LOT of money, takes a lot of time and at the end of the day you probably cannot use it in any meaningful product without infringing on about 20 other patents from potentially uncooperative companies like Apple or Google, not to mention patent trolls.
Open source software works because of a happy confluence of circumstances. Software is automatically covered by copyright and there is zero cost to get a copyright. Software also has effectively zero marginal cost to reproduce and can be easily improved by someone skilled in development. Hardware is not automatically protected and the costs to get a patent are substantial. Hardware is not at all cheap to reproduce and while it can be improved, it takes still more money to make and distribute and test those improvements.
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Actually making hardware is a fairly straightforward, albeit costly, proposition
And if it involves any custom ASICs, it's a very costly proposition.
Tooling in general is expensive (Score:5, Informative)
And if it involves any custom ASICs, it's a very costly proposition.
It's not just ASICs. Any hardware that would involve custom tooling tends to be VERY expensive. I'm getting a quote right now on a very simple custom molded plastic connector which we are going to produce in modest volumes. The tooling is basically a piece of CNC milled aluminum and it will cost us about $8000. This is to produce a connector that will sell for about $1.00 each and we might make $0.10 profit per unit. That cost doesn't include labor, raw materials, the cost of the machine the tooling will run on, overhead, or delivery costs.
Everyone is going on and on about 3D printing and it is super cool and useful but not the way a lot of people think. 3D printing is OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive for any kind of volume manufacturing. It eliminates setup costs but the cost/unit of production is far, far higher than with other techniques. If the production volume is sufficient to justify tooling a process like injection molding can produce plastic parts far cheaper than 3D printing could ever hope to achieve. The part that I mention above if I were to have it 3D printed would cost about $40/unit and I couldn't get more than a handful made per day.
Manufacturing isn't cheap or easy. Software guys (understandably) tend to thing everything works like software when in fact very few industries even remotely resemble software. They tend to fall into the trap of having a hammer and thinking every problem is a nail. Manufacturing hardware could not be more different.
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I thought manufacturers would use 3D printing to create custom tooling. It may not be as reliable, but would have cheaper replacement cost.
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I thought manufacturers would use 3D printing to create custom tooling.
Maybe someday but not anytime soon. The tooling we need is made from hardened steel. Even if there were a 3D printer that could make it (there isn't) the cost of the machine would be astronomical right now. We'd have to create a LOT of custom tooling to justify the machine cost even if it were possible. In 10-20 years? Maybe...
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Wait, you just said in your previous post that your tooling was made from milled aluminum, now you say hardened steel, which is it?
Different tooling. We have presses that use hardened steel for crimping terminals. We have other tooling for moldings that uses aluminum. We have still other tooling that is made from other materials.
There is additive manufacturing processes in aluminum and titanium, but I would still go with milling for producing injection molds
Nothing affordable to businesses like ours. I'm well aware of what is out there but it isn't going to be mainstream technology for at least another decade and probably longer.
If the tooling is costing $8000, it's either fucking massive, or you're counting the design cost in addition to the machining.
Of course the cost includes design and machining. We don't do it ourselves - we're not a tool & die shop. And $8000 for press t
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That's not the important problem with open source hardware. Actually making hardware is a fairly straightforward, albeit costly, proposition. I should know since I run a manufacturing company. Give me a design and an adequate amount of cash and I can get any product made and delivered wherever you want it. That's not the real obstacle to open source hardware.
That is fine for customization, but not for being able to inspect what the hardware really does. With some effort people are able to reproduce build environments and prove that yes, this source code leads to this binary. Or you can compile it yourself if you need stronger tin foil. Validating that the chip/board I get back from you is the same blueprint I sent in right down to the circuit level is an equally unfeasible task as manufacturing it myself. Would you really trust a chip design sent to say China o
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We really need some kind of an organization that we could donate hardware designs to that would guarantee any resulting patents would be open.
Doesn't really solve the core problems. 1) It's expensive to get and defend a patent. If you cannot defend a patent then companies with deep pockets will ignore the patent. If you don't have a patent then companies without deep pockets can copy you too. 2) Even if you get a patent that doesn't guarantee you'll be able to produce a useful product without infringing on other patents. Lots of tech products simply cannot be produced without cross-licensing agreements. 3) Manufacturing hardware is expensiv
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Doesn't really solve the core problems. 1) It's expensive to get and defend a patent. If you cannot defend a patent then companies with deep pockets will ignore the patent.
I'm happy to have people ignore the patent if that were possible. I just don't want someone to claim the patent and then charge others to use it.
2) Even if you get a patent that doesn't guarantee you'll be able to produce a useful product without infringing on other patents. Lots of tech products simply cannot be produced without cross-licensing agreements.
I was really hoping there was some way the donatee could fill this role.
3) Manufacturing hardware is expensive even without worrying about patents. Software can be manufactured very cheaply - almost for free. Hardware requires a credible business model and substantial capital investment for even the simplest of products.
Agreed. But I think the need for all that is driven by the licensing issues. There's simply no way to put hardware designs into the commons. You can't copyleft a patent.
No disrespect intended (seriously!) but if you cannot afford to get it patented then I have to wonder if it is terribly valuable. Patents cost a few thousand dollars. Costly enough to keep the casual out but it's not a prohibitive amount of money. Defending the patent on the other hand can be very expensive if it is something that others might care to copy. It's not terribly hard to get financing to patent and produce a product with some meaningful market value.
None taken. I think it would be useful to a lot of people but I have no interest in patenting it for my own profit. It doesn't
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I was really hoping there was some way the donatee could fill this role.
Kind of a catch-22 there. If the donatee is to defend the patent they need to have a revenue stream to do so which presumably would have to come from the product which (probably) necessarily requires that they exclude others from using it. Not really sure how to resolve that conundrum. Patents were designed to combat the Free Rider Problem but in this case the economics of the patent system interfere with the ability of people to put something in the public sphere and keep it there in a manner similar to
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I was really hoping there was some way the donatee could fill this role.
Kind of a catch-22 there. If the donatee is to defend the patent they need to have a revenue stream to do so which presumably would have to come from the product which (probably) necessarily requires that they exclude others from using it. Not really sure how to resolve that conundrum. Patents were designed to combat the Free Rider Problem but in this case the economics of the patent system interfere with the ability of people to put something in the public sphere and keep it there in a manner similar to copyleft.
My theory is that some companies would have an interest in fostering an environment where patents could be developed for the common good. Perhaps if it's worthwhile to back a software non-aggression pact it might also be worthwhile to back an organization that independent inventors could donate their designs to. Somewhere I could send my designs to knowing that any resulting patents would be available to anyone to use.
Out of curiosity, what sort of product is it? What does it do in general? You don't have to tell me all the gory details but you've piqued my interest.
I'm trying to figure out how I can answer that question. There's nothing about the hardw
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There are products which have expensive tooling, like injection molded plastic parts; and there are products that can be made inexpensively at the click of a button, like water-jet cut metal parts, or CNC wirebending.
I'm an accountant and an engineer and I run a manufacturing company. There is no such thing as pushbutton manufacturing. It does not exist. And even if it did it would not be cheap. Nothing can be made "inexpensively at the click of a button" unless you are not accounting for all the costs involved. There is FAR more to it than merely the cost of direct manufacturing. Injection molded plastic parts require very expensive die sets and molding machines plus design and engineering time, machine operator
a poor business model (Score:2)
Suppose you could do the impossible; create a generic computer system that is not burdened with patents. It would cost money to come up with the prototype, and then you would have to consider manufacturing it. A system of hardware devoid of protection from competition.
Your investment in manufacturing equipment, location, employees etc will have to result in profits or all is lost. But, having laid some of the groundwork, done some of the initial research, you now face competitors who have the benefit of tha