
Why the Best Days of Open Hardware are Yet to Come - swah
http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=1863
======
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.

~~~
sliverstorm
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.

~~~
Joakal
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.

~~~
nickpinkston
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.

~~~
Joakal
Was talking about stuff like this:
<https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/05/right-repair-law-pro>

------
bradleyland
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 would need to be displaced. The factors that would drive
that are largely unrelated to technology. 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.

Look at the many other products in our lives that people regularly replace
before their usefulness has expired. Cars are probably the best example. When
the economy is booming, people replace their cars rapidly. As it slows down,
they hold on to them longer. I can't find any long term data, but the graph
and caption on this page imply that the two are correlated: "The Changing U.S.
Auto Industry Series: Consumer Sentiment During Challenging Times."

[http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/facts/2010_fotw...](http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/facts/2010_fotw622.html)

I don't see any reason computers will be different. "Hackers" will remain a
niche community, but I still think the many other reasons cited by the author
will result in better tools for us to play with. For example, development of
reasonably priced and performant FPGAs would be huge. Look at the Arduino line
of products.

The future is still a bright one. I just don't see "heirloom laptops" in our
future.

~~~
0x12
> 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 and you can no longer afford its
creation.

~~~
sliverstorm
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.

~~~
anchorsteam
I feel that personal goods like clothing, shoes, hand tools, etc... were made
with more durability in mind until the mid 60's or so.

~~~
0x12
Absolutely, on top of that the stuff that is made today is not even meant to
be repaired at all. It's all about the cost to the manufacturer and not
falling apart until the day after the warranty expires.

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j_m_f
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.).

~~~
Estragon
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.

~~~
j_m_f
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.).

------
0x12
My money is on massive FPGAs, think a whole wafer of silicon with just a bunch
of general purpose IO and power.

Once stuff like that becomes available at a reasonable price (a big FPGA will
cost you a _lot_ of money at the moment) open hardware will be as simple as
downloading a bitstream on to your 'general purpose' rig.

------
dmboyd
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), purely because I think its easier to visualise a
functional language translating into circuitry.

Although I do wonder whether it will take a start-up to be able to
successfully merge both the software and the hardware components into a
workable model.

~~~
sliverstorm
_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.

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

~~~
jurjenh
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...

~~~
wmf
Yeah, but 10 years is still a lot longer than the 3-year upgrade cycle many
people are on today.

