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by rwmj 4749 days ago
The proprietary software is always going to be there (unfortunately).

The precise hardware layout of an FPFA is important for performance and a trade secret. Proprietary software algorithms can squeeze more out of the fixed hardware.
1 comments
dllthomas 4749 days ago
If proprietary software is why I'm not buying an FPGA (and if there are a lot of people like me) there will be much more to be made opening things up than keeping things closed. Not saying that this is the case, just that it could be, so "always" might be an overstatement.
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rwmj 4749 days ago
I hope you're right, I work at Red Hat after all.

However I still don't think it's likely. The trouble is this is all tied to the hardware. FPGAs are integrated circuits with a complexity and development cost close to that of CPUs. (The fact that you can only use about 4% of the density of the FPGA is beside the point here). Because of this huge barrier to entry -- building your own fab -- we don't have fully open source x86-compatible high end processors, and we don't have open FPGAs either.

As long as the hardware is closed, the software for doing FPGA design is also going to be closed, for the reasons I outlined in my comment above.

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dllthomas 4749 days ago
Yeah, it's more hope than expectation; it just seems unlikely not absurd though.
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