Mark Bruns: SUN changes the world [again] with OpenSPARC.net

OpenSparc.net seems to be primarily an example of the Platform Approach to SoC design, but I suppose the OpenSPARC architects and Sun's Chief Open Source Officer would argue that the Platform Approach is too narrow of a pidgeonhole ... that anything could develop in a diverse crowdsourced design ecosystem with tens of or hundreds of thousands of design engineers collaborating [via GNU license] creating new IP and new tools and even synthesizing brand new architectures. 

OpenSparc.net seems to be primarily an example of the Platform Approach to SoC design, but I suppose the OpenSPARC architects and Sun's Chief Open Source Officer would argue that the Platform Approach is too narrow of a pidgeonhole ... that anything could develop in a diverse crowdsourced design ecosystem with tens of or hundreds of thousands of design engineers collaborating [via GNU license] creating new IP and new tools and even synthesizing brand new architectures.

Whatever one thinks of Sun's evangelical hype, it seems that they are very intent on launching themselves out in front of other developments in the world of fabless ASIC / SoC designers. It is a struggle for dinosaurs like me to comprehend the business models behind ventures like: Sun's OpenSPARC, open-silicon.com, esilicon.com, keyASIC.com, Incyte's ChipEstimate.com ...

It seems that making money from open source seems to depend upon: 1) unleashing bazaar creativity by giving a crowd of young, smart, low-wage, almost-professionals powerful tools to build even MORE powerful tools, 2) acting like the goat who knows where he's going to get out in front to lead the parade into hell 3) then being able to a craft a dynamic strategy to capitalize on a new niche or on a reputation or brand as innovative ultra-creative provider for the next BIG thing (e.g. iPhone).

Whether it makes money or not is questionable, but crowdsourcing h/w and s/w seems likely to explode things in a big way -- there are just too many new EEs / CprEs out there in the world and the cost of a computing horsepower [for their IC design workstations] is no longer a barrier like it was, in the old days like when grad students Sergey Brin and Larrry Page were maxing out their credit cards to buy servers and build a rescue plan for Sun's CTO Eric Schmidt ... IRON IC.

OpenSPARC may not make any money ... but there are probably SUNW investors would tell you that Sun [as defined by by founders like Bill Joy and Vinod Khosla] was always about using a business to make technological history, that Sun has a history of treating profit as a secondary objective (e.g. Java) and, in spite of that, those investors are glad they didn't dump their SUNW stock last year.

Read the original article: http://markbruns.livejournal.com/633.html