Pi vs BeagleBone-Black

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

mynameisJim wrote:

 

The current definitions we're working with are flawed as they encourage manufactures to put more info where we can't touch it

 

You're confusing two things:  being more open, and having more functionality.  They're completely and utterly different concepts.

 

Sure, those who want to use advanced but closed functions will praise their availability, but this has absolutely nothing to do with the hardware being more open or more closed.  You're looking at two entirely different types of stakeholder.

 

The open metric is not flawed, it's just not valued highly by those who don't rate openness highly.  Doh!

Now now, don't go putting words into my mouth that I haven't said, lol.  I'm saying (quoting my previous post) "[the current definition] encourages manufactures to put more info where we can't touch it in order to get the stamp of open source approval instead of actually rewarding those who make the effort to give us more control over the equipment."

This has nothing to do with me wanting openness or me wanting functionality, this is about the atmosphere we (in the broader hobbyist/hacker community sense) are encouraging.  If I'm making a board that I want hobbyist to get into then we've made it clear that it makes more sense to hide everything away in the hardware than let anyone knows it exists.  If the foundation hadn't been so open about things and hidden the files on the FAT32 partition in a non-editable memory location then all this binary blob business never would have come up.  In fact they could have claimed complete openness if they had just held off on saying until they had gotten the ARM side GPU interfaces released and hidden all the FAT32 files.

And this is why I'm saying things are flawed (and not because I don't highly value openness as you've stated ) because we are by our own actions creating the framework for a loss of functionality so we can have openness.  It's like we're cutting our noses to spite or faces.

Well said! - L

John wrote:

Yes, you can use them for OpenGL and other standard graphics operations, but you could also use them for non-graphical high-performance parallel processing -- if you could get at the architecture

On PC based nVidia and AMD graphics cards you can, at least through another standard interface. Look up OpenCL, it's been around since 2008. A lot of current supercomputers use graphics cards

for massively parallel FP processing.

mynameisJim wrote:

You're confusing two things:  being more open, and having more functionality.  They're completely and utterly different concepts.

 

Sure, those who want to use advanced but closed functions will praise their availability, but this has absolutely nothing to do with the hardware being more open or more closed.  You're looking at two entirely different types of stakeholder.

 

And this is why I'm saying things are flawed (and not because I don't highly value openness as you've stated ) because we are by our own actions creating the framework for a loss of functionality so we can have openness.  It's like we're cutting our noses to spite or faces.

But that's exactly what I said --- that desire for openness is being confused with desire for functionality.

To someone who wants openness, adding a closed feature is no benefit at all.  Only those who don't mind that the nose is closed would say that cutting it off spites their (otherwise open) face.  That analogy is emotionally biased because we don't like to lose our noses, but if you restate it with "leprous carbunkle" in place of nose, you'll see how cutting it off can be very desirable.  The leprous carbunkle is the closed feature in the analogy.

Gary Stewart wrote:

 

On PC based nVidia and AMD graphics cards you can, at least through another standard interface. Look up OpenCL,

Excellent point!

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=3330&sid=cf797bab449a96f7e4ebee0a7eb096ab

It comes back to the acid test again:  "Is it field-programmable?"

It's the manufacturer's choice whether they make their device field-programmable or not, and they generally make it so for their own flexibility and benefit.   That choice has ramifications though, because if they make it field-programmable for their own benefit but disclose no programming information then they can rightly be criticized for providing a closed programmable feature.

After all, if the product is field programmable then there is no technical barrier to user reprogramming other than the artificial barrier erected by the manufacturer through deliberately witholding information.  That artificial barrier is what is being criticized, because it artificially limits what the owner of the product can do with his or her purchased device.  If the product were not field-programmable then this situation would not arise.

selsinork wrote:

 

Gary Stewart wrote:

 

On PC based nVidia and AMD graphics cards you can, at least through another standard interface. Look up OpenCL,

Excellent point!

 

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=3330&sid=cf797bab449a96f7e4ebee0a7eb096ab

open apis are the only way to go. Theres no pointin learning a chips innermost detail if you just want to use it for processing as that information is not transferable. so opencl or what ever is the thing that needed. not even sure the gpu on the raspberry pi could have an opencl implementation, i don;t know about the latest one but the videocore3 used a combingation of a vector processor and hardware blocks to get its speed and low power. That would be really difficult to put open cl over the top of. Nvidia stuff uses more general purpose stuff internally as they are desktop gpus with no silicon or power limtiation so is easier to write opencl for. You also get a lot more processing power so its much more worthwhile doing.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

It comes back to the acid test again:  "Is it field-programmable?"

 

It's the manufacturer's choice whether they make their device field-programmable or not, and they generally make it so for their own flexibility and benefit.   That choice has ramifications though, because if they make it field-programmable for their own benefit but disclose no programming information then they can rightly be criticized for providing a closed programmable feature.

 

After all, if the product is field programmable then there is no technical barrier to user reprogramming other than the artificial barrier erected by the manufacturer through deliberately witholding information.  That artificial barrier is what is being criticized, because it artificially limits what the owner of the product can do with his or her purchased device.  If the product were not field-programmable then this situation would not arise.

Manufactures make stuff field programmable for their own benefit. Because there is no other reason for it. Why make it field programmable if you dont need it to be field programmable. So field prgrammable is the manufacturers decision for their own benefit. There bugger all wrong wwith that attitude. Just because it field programmable doenst meant he manfacturer has to tell you how to do it. Why should they? It more work on their part, more money off their bottom line. And you lose too much off the bottom like you go bust and put people out of work. Just cos its programmable doesnt give you the right to demand how to program it from the maker. Those nutjobs at the fsf seem to think they have a god given right to the infotrmation they need to program a device. No they dont. They dont stop you from programming it it- you can do what you like withthe product. but they really dont need to tell you how to do it and I dont see why they should. most people who buy product dont give a dag if they can program it, the makers of the product aint gonna spend money on those that do cos there are so few of them.

Billy Thornton wrote:

 

So field prgrammable is the manufacturers decision for their own benefit. There bugger all wrong wwith that attitude.

And correspondingly, there is nothing wrong with pointing out that the manufacturer has delivered to the user a  programmable device which the user is being denied from programming through an artificial restriction.  Interest in open source software and open hardware is huge these days, and no manufacturer can pretend to be unaware of it.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

mynameisJim wrote:

You're confusing two things:  being more open, and having more functionality.  They're completely and utterly different concepts.

 

Sure, those who want to use advanced but closed functions will praise their availability, but this has absolutely nothing to do with the hardware being more open or more closed.  You're looking at two entirely different types of stakeholder.

 

And this is why I'm saying things are flawed (and not because I don't highly value openness as you've stated ) because we are by our own actions creating the framework for a loss of functionality so we can have openness.  It's like we're cutting our noses to spite or faces.

 

But that's exactly what I said --- that desire for openness is being confused with desire for functionality.

 

To someone who wants openness, adding a closed feature is no benefit at all.  Only those who don't mind that the nose is closed would say that cutting it off spites their (otherwise open) face.  That analogy is emotionally biased because we don't like to lose our noses, but if you restate it with "leprous carbunkle" in place of nose, you'll see how cutting it off can be very desirable.  The leprous carbunkle is the closed feature in the analogy.

See there you're putting words in my mouth again.  I definitily want openness, but you're stating that I can only be for openness provided I think that adding a closed feature is of no benefit.  I would argue that calling it a leprous cabunkle is equally emotionally biased because obviously that's something you'd definitely want removed.

I fear, however that you're focusing too closely on a single part of my post and ignoring the greater context around it.  Namely that "[the current definition] encourages manufactures to put more info where we can't touch it in order to get the stamp of open source approval instead of actually rewarding those who make the effort to give us more control over the equipment." Now in none of my posts have I said that I want us to stop pushing for more openness, what I have said is we need to applauded the steps being done to make systems more open, rather than attacking people when they release something additional becuase they haven't released everything yet.

I've also stated that this attitude is creating an atmosphere which encourages manufacture to remove functionality.  This is not, as you've mistakenly stated, because I'm confusing functionality with openness, it's because I'm taking the current attitude amongst hobbyist and looking down the road and recognizing that this will ultimately work against us.  Through pattern recognition I can look at what's going on and see that we're ultimately going to be restricting growth.

Conversely if we were to focus on how open different boards were (using a weighted average rather than a blind count) and then encouraged the purchasing of boards that were more open, then the manufacturers would be motivated to open up more of the previously closed features rather than just restricting *any* use of closed systems.

The current mindset actually encourages an increase of black boxes that obfuscate the system rather than encouraging manufacturers to truly open up the process.  Which is why it's so flawed.  It is actually encouraging the regression of available technology instead of furthering the amount of technology that is truly open.

> And correspondingly, there is nothing wrong with pointing out that the manufacturer has delivered to the user a  programmable device which the user is being denied from programming through an artificial restriction.  Interest in open source software and open hardware is huge these days, and no manufacturer can pretend to be unaware of it.

This I can fully agree with lol