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Open Software, meet Open Hardware
Several years ago, Sun began to put the wheels in motion for
a project called OpenSPARC. The project was officially launched in
December of last year with the intention that companies would adopt the SPARC
design. In March of this year Sun released the source code to the Niagara
T1 processor.
Open Software, meet Open Hardware
Several years ago, Sun began to put the wheels in motion for
a project called OpenSPARC. The project was officially launched in
December of last year with the intention that companies would adopt the SPARC
design. In March of this year Sun released the source code to the Niagara
T1 processor.
A British-Italian company composed of former STMicroelectronics engineers is the first to adopt this approach. The
company has just announced a cut-down variant of the Sun T1 design, dubbed
S1. The S1 core is a SPARC v9 derivative, designed specifically for PDAs,
cameras and set-top boxes.
Open-sourced hardware is a relatively new phenomenon. Companies like Sun,
AMD and Intel spend billions of dollars to develop new processors. The
OpenSPARC project is a relatively interesting approach to hardware
design. Sun expects fresh development from OpenSPARC to make its way back
into production designs -- while also giving the company a fresh source of new
talent.
With the open hardware initiative so young, itÂ’s hard to gauge if the
philosophy is working. However, with the S1 release the initiative has
taken its first steps.
Read the original article: http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=4159
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