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Ashton Mills

Opening Hardware

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By Ashton Mills
Sep 26, 2008 | 3 Comments
It began with software, and with source code, but the principles of open source are being applied to hardware as well – which may seem strange, at first. After all with software it’s easy to collaborate on and distribute the product, but tangible hardware isn’t quite the same story.

So what does a move to open hardware mean?

If you remember, one of the final hurdles for drivers under Linux are graphics. Most everything else is open source, which is why the kernel contains source code for thousands of drivers. But for graphics the trend to become open for NVIDIA, AMD and Intel has been a slow process – as I covered last issue, Intel and AMD are now actively involved in opening up either specifications or code, to varying degrees, while NVIDIA remains steadfastly silent.

While one solution is to wait for companies like NVIDIA to open up (which may never happen), another is to just build an open graphics platform to begin with – one for which the specifications, and the drivers, are released under the GPL.

That’s the principle behind the OGD1 (Open Graphics Development) board, designed by the Open Graphics Project and released in May of this year. While it’s certainly no GTX 280 killer – and never will be, since its focus isn’t 3D – it is however a completely open 256M dual-DVI graphics card whose specifications and drivers are open sourced. In fact, even the schematics and circuit layouts are open as well – downlaodable from the Traversaltech website, the manufacturers of the OGD1, as a series of PDFs. If you’ve ever wanted to design your own graphics card, this wouldn’t be a bad place to start.

Keep in mind with schematics freely available it’s not just about having access to how the card works – others can take the design and improve upon it, as with open source code, and build an entirely new product. Something that might be helpful for producing cheap hardware in third world countries, for example. And just as with open source software, there are cost savings with open hardware too.

The OGD1 has something else going for it – the core chip is a Xilinx 3S4000 FPGA, or Field Programmable Gate Array. In layman’s, this means the operation of the chip can be re-configured on the fly, and could ostensibly be designed to perform completely different functions not limited to graphics.

Unfortunately, it’s not cheap – the OGD1 is being marketed as a card for developers, not mainstream users, and clocks in at over $1000. But as the first of its kind, and perhaps a new wave of open hardware to come in the future, demand will in time create a market for affordable products. Additionally, as a development platform where hacking is encouraged, the OGD1 can be adapted to a wide range of market segments, from embedded systems to handhelds, and with it a potential cost saving that could be passed onto the consumer.

While definitely innovative, and a new take on the open source concept, it’s actually not the first open hardware project. There have been others like the Simputer and even open source CPUs such as LEON, a specialised CPU developed for the Europen Space Agency. Indeed, the concept of open hardware goes beyond computing – the OSCar project has a goal to create an entirely open source car.

When it comes to tangible gear the open source philosophy probably doesn’t work in as many areas as it does it does with software – being substantially more malleable and cost effective in distribution as it is – but it is very cool to see it expand to particular devices, like graphics cards, and could well accelerate a paradigm shift for other hardware that could benefit from being open.

And when that happens I’ll be there welcoming it with *cough* open arms.
 
3 Comments
Thoughts on this article? Add a comment below.
colganaitor
Sep 27, 2008 7:22 PM
 kewl . .

Can I distribute my graphite pencil mod?

*passes pencil to friend needing stationery*
wheelz
Sep 27, 2008 8:23 PM
 only if it includes a complete table of core elements, grain densities, and graphite molecular make-up.

I might *need* to improve that pencil you know.
aliza
Jul 1, 2009 8:56 PM
 so u wanna say that open source policy has been adopted by hardware industry. would it be possible to modify an open hardware as open source software?
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