Am Samstag, den 22.07.2006, 09:09 -0400 schrieb Timothy Miller:

> Someone suggested that it might be inappropriate for OHF to have the
> membership and Traversal to use it.  I'm not sure, though.

IMHO, OHF is the best entity to get a Vendor ID. But instead of
assigning Device IDs to real devices, it should assign Device IDs to
various open specifications. The first such "Device" would be the FPGA
programming interface, the second one would probably be the OGC register
interface. Any real device which implements the same interface (either
by licensing it from TT or by implementing the eventually GPLed HDL
code) can use the same Vendor ID and Device ID.

This could allow hobbyists to experiment with hardware and significantly
lower the barrier of converting the hobby into a start-up. All you would
need is to open your interface specs (something you probably want to do
anyway, unless you want to write all drivers yourself), and ask OHF for
an ID. The start-up gets a valid Vendor ID and Device ID and we get yet
another open hardware specification. The criteria for qualification may
include stuff like forced consolidation of interface definitions with
similar existing devices to avoid redundancy, prescription of a (set of)
software licenses for the drivers, etc.

I don't know the specifics of the PCI identification namespace, but
AFAIK, there are further identification numbers besides the Vendor ID
and Device ID. Could they be used to expand the number of IDs to be
enough for all hobbyists? How about a common interface for retrieving a
128 bit GUID as the true device ID + some bits for the version number?


- Viktor Pracht

_______________________________________________
Open-graphics mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics
List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)

Reply via email to