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Why the Best Days of Open Hardware are Yet to Come

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Re: Why the Best Days of Open Hardware are Yet to Come

#11

Post by sliverstorm »

0x12 wrote: post #5
bradleyland wrote: post #3

I'm not sure if all of these assumptions follow. Marketers are in the business of finding reasons to compel you to buy new stuff, and marketers are the ones making products. In the past, people held on to things longer, not because they lasted longer or were viable longer, but because they didn't have the resources to buy new stuff. In order for "repair culture" to set-in in any significant way, consumption culture w…

> For example, a global economic depression would result in people keeping their possessions longer simply because they don't have the money to buy new. That would seriously suck then because the stuff that we've got today for the most part was built with a very definite life-cycle in mind. So when you are dumped in that global recession you need the quality stuff that wasn't produced when the recession wasn't on yet…

That's what repairs and maintenance is about. Religiously upkeeping something you can't possibly afford to replace is how it was done for ages.

Re: Why the Best Days of Open Hardware are Yet to Come

#12

Post by sliverstorm »

dmboyd wrote: post #10

I like where this is going, ie. Hardware becomes just another software component. The key item thats left is some sort of standard interface to port programs to a FPGA style processor, i.e. a way of interfacing between a language compiler and HDL. I like the look of the Reduceron ( http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/fp/reduceron/ ) which looks to be funded by Xilinx and Lava( by Satnam Singh, who works for Microsoft Research),…

I like where this is going, ie. Hardware becomes just another software component.

Unlikely. You can't run software without hardware. Even if the computers of tomorrow are a mess of FPGA's that can be reconfigured on the fly, somebody's got to make the FPGA's.

Re: Why the Best Days of Open Hardware are Yet to Come

#13

Post by Estragon »

jurjenh wrote: post #7
ChuckMcM wrote: post #2

Its a great insight. What happens when your laptop is 'fast enough' for the forseeable future?

Then you start running into failure. Modern electronics isn't really built to last, so having a laptop that will last you more than 10 years is extremely unlikely. Until market demand changes to quality, long-lived electronics, you will still be rolling over your computing device every couple of years. And then there's always the trends and cycles of fashion...

My iBook (purchased shortly before 9/11/2001) is still going strong.

Re: Why the Best Days of Open Hardware are Yet to Come

#14

Post by Estragon »

j_m_f wrote: post #6

Although I do agree that Open Hardware has a bright future, I'd just like to point out that people have been calling the end of transistor size scaling for a few decades, and technology keeps finding ways to get around the limitations (strained silicon, high-k metal gates, finFETs, etc.).

From the article:

  > 5 nm is about the space between 100 silicon atoms, so even if this
  > guess is wrong, it can be wrong by no more than a few technology
  > generations.

Re: Why the Best Days of Open Hardware are Yet to Come

#15

Post by sliverstorm »

I am somewhat annoyed by the author's portrayal of individuals or small companies as the innovators, and large companies as the converse. Who do you think drives Moore's Law? It's not some force of nature. The material properties of silicon are not changing every 18 months. Do you think it will not take innovation to produce a viable 14nm production line?

Additionally, even if we hit hard limits in transistor gate size, do not expect progress to stop. There are alternative technologies aplenty that put silicon to shame, that are only avoided because of how cheap manufacturing is with silicon.

Re: Why the Best Days of Open Hardware are Yet to Come

#16

Post by sliverstorm »

sliverstorm wrote: post #15

I am somewhat annoyed by the author's portrayal of individuals or small companies as the innovators, and large companies as the converse. Who do you think drives Moore's Law? It's not some force of nature. The material properties of silicon are not changing every 18 months. Do you think it will not take innovation to produce a viable 14nm production line? Additionally, even if we hit hard limits in transistor gate si…

One more thing. The reason early computers and radios shipped with manuals and lists of replacement parts is because the technology was young, and things broke. As the technology has matured, it has integrated into our lives and failure rates have gone down. As a consequence, fewer and fewer people are interested in the guts, and people expect it to "just work". They have no interest or use for a repair manual with their Macbook Pro.

It is much the same as with the juvenille stages of any technology. Automobiles were once notoriously unreliable; old British cars were said to require work every weekend to keep running. Next, American cars had 5-digit odometers, because cars didn't last beyond 100,000 miles. Today, cars routinely go 200,000 miles or more. There is talk that soon engine wear will cease to be the limiting factor in a cars' life. As a result, your average citizen has never seen the inside of their engine bay, and could care less about how to fix their car- they expect it to just work.

Re: Why the Best Days of Open Hardware are Yet to Come

#17

Post by Joakal »

sliverstorm wrote: post #16
sliverstorm wrote: post #15

I am somewhat annoyed by the author's portrayal of individuals or small companies as the innovators, and large companies as the converse. Who do you think drives Moore's Law? It's not some force of nature. The material properties of silicon are not changing every 18 months. Do you think it will not take innovation to produce a viable 14nm production line? Additionally, even if we hit hard limits in transistor gate si…

One more thing. The reason early computers and radios shipped with manuals and lists of replacement parts is because the technology was young, and things broke. As the technology has matured, it has integrated into our lives and failure rates have gone down. As a consequence, fewer and fewer people are interested in the guts, and people expect it to "just work". They have no interest or use for a repair manual with t…

The fail rates may have reduced some interest, but I believe there's other bigger reasons:

+ Students are increasingly brought up to do memorisation over creativity.

+ It's hard to hack integrated microchips. Especially with proprietary software. Want to repair your own car? Need to take it to a Brand(tm) Certified car repair service to even get the proprietary diagnostic. Even then, they may refuse to give the logs to you.

+ Loss of ownership with IP laws. Try to break open Wii? You're a pirate! Jailbreaking? Bad! Also run the risk of being sued for talking about breaking open hardware despite owning it.

Re: Why the Best Days of Open Hardware are Yet to Come

#18

Post by j_m_f »

Estragon wrote: post #14
j_m_f wrote: post #6

Although I do agree that Open Hardware has a bright future, I'd just like to point out that people have been calling the end of transistor size scaling for a few decades, and technology keeps finding ways to get around the limitations (strained silicon, high-k metal gates, finFETs, etc.).

From the article: > 5 nm is about the space between 100 silicon atoms, so even if this > guess is wrong, it can be wrong by no more than a few technology > generations.

My point is that, even in that case (current silicon scaling stopping at 5nm), there are a lot of potential technologies that could allow Moore's law to continue (nanowires, III-V materials, etc.).

Re: Why the Best Days of Open Hardware are Yet to Come

#19

Post by nickpinkston »

Joakal wrote: post #17
sliverstorm wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One more thing. The reason early computers and radios shipped with manuals and lists of replacement parts is because the technology was young, and things broke. As the technology has matured, it has integrated into our lives and failure rates have gone down. As a consequence, fewer and fewer people are interested in the guts, and people expect it to "just work". They have no interest or use for a repair manual with t…

The fail rates may have reduced some interest, but I believe there's other bigger reasons: + Students are increasingly brought up to do memorisation over creativity. + It's hard to hack integrated microchips. Especially with proprietary software. Want to repair your own car? Need to take it to a Brand(tm) Certified car repair service to even get the proprietary diagnostic. Even then, they may refuse to give the logs…

It's largely a myth that you need proprietary scans. OBDII/III are standards that give instructive error codes - it's actually pretty easy with them and a good multimeter. The manuals are step by step - I'd say parts monopolies in German cars, etc. hurt worse.

Re: Why the Best Days of Open Hardware are Yet to Come

#20

Post by wtallis »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #2

Its a great insight. What happens when your laptop is 'fast enough' for the forseeable future?

Just because an increase in CPU power won't lead to a perceptible improvement in performance, that doesn't mean that your CPU is fast enough. It just means that the bottleneck isn't your CPU at the moment. If all your data were stored on high-end SSDs, and your network connections were multi-gigabit, and your display was 300dpi 120Hz, you would find a faster CPU useful.

Only when programmers are the bottleneck, ie. computers can run the most complex algorithms in realtime, rendering their output at the limits of human sensory capabilities, will we have computers that are "fast enough". Until then, our machines are merely tolerably (or not) slow.

Calling a laptop that still takes more than a second to launch Photoshop "fast enough" is too forgiving - the room for improvement is so obvious that we can only forget it by willfully ignoring and excusing it.

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