> Pieter wrote: > > >--cut--- > > > >>*Are* any of creative's competitors releasing specs for chips that do > >>advanced effects? I understand RME and MidiMan have been quite open, > >>but they use FPGA chips, and am I right in thinking those are > >>off-the-shelf chips with already open specs? > >> > > > >FPGA (= 'Field Programmable Gate Array') chips are indeed open > spec (well, > >most of them). But the problem is that the chip specs are no > source of info > >for writing drivers. Let me explain a little about FPGA: > > > It's worse than that. To program the FPGA you have to take the netlist > from your design program and then create a chip-specific bit sequence. > How this is done is secret. So you can't program any reasonably > up-to-date FPGAs with open-source software. I have hammered on the > doors of many manufactueres asking "how does keeping this bit sequence > secret help you sell more FPGAs?" but the answer is a long silence. >
I didn't know it was that bad. I did get a course in FPGA programming, but as we had to use XilinX foundation manager, I didn't experience that problem. Anyway, I was just trying to point out that even if you get the (programming) specs of the FPGA, they wouldn't be usefull if you don't know how RME used it (eg: what pins are PCI). Could be hard to figure it out. And you would have to rewrite 'firmware', which was not the intention. PP
