Open hardware, boards, fab labs, robotics, GPUs.
In NVIDIA's DGX platforms the interconnect silicon (NVLink, NVSwitch) is proprietary, while the software and mechanical layers around it are public: NCCL under a BSD licence, the GB200 NVL72 rack contributed to the Open Compute Project. Where the line falls between what is documented and reusable and what stays tied to a single vendor.
Read moreNVIDIA's Linux GPU kernel modules have been open source since 2022, but the boundary of that openness runs through the GSP and the closed CUDA user space. What stays proprietary, and why the open driver depends on a closed firmware.
Read moreMetal is an explicit, low-overhead model for rendering and compute on Apple GPUs, with a single shader language and unified memory on Apple Silicon. Notes on MSL, MPS/MPSGraph and Metal 3 after WWDC 2022.
Read moreEvery industrial robot maker has its own language. A shared model that crosses brands can be built, but the level you bind it to decides what becomes portable.
Read moreThe Jetson Nano announced at GTC 2019 puts 128 Maxwell cores and CUDA 10 into a 99-dollar, 5-10 W device. The interesting part is the continuity of the stack between training on desktop GPUs and inference at the edge, not the price.
Read moreA fab lab is defined by a shared inventory of machines and a common open-source toolchain. The opening of Fab Lab Toscana in Cascina is an occasion to examine what makes the nodes of the Fab network interoperable.
Read moreHow to read a personal radiofrequency electromagnetic field sensor from a Chrome app over a USB serial port, and why V/m readings only become legible next to the thresholds of ICNIRP 1998 and the Italian DPCM of 8 July 2003.
Read moreThe Arduino YÚN pairs an ATmega32U4 microcontroller with an Atheros AR9331 SoC running OpenWrt. Technical notes on the serial bridge between the two chips and what changes for anyone prototyping connected objects.
Read moreThe BeagleBone Black ships in April 2013 at $45 with a TI AM335x SoC, 512 MB DDR3, 2 GB eMMC and two 200 MHz PRUs. Next to the core that runs Linux sits a real-time subsystem few same-price boards offer.
Read moreArduino 1.0 (30 November 2011) freezes the sketch format and core API: .ino extension, Arduino.h replacing WProgram.h, Stream return values, rewritten String and SoftwareSerial. Notes on the compatibility breaks.
Read moreIn 2011 the production data of a photovoltaic plant lives behind proprietary protocols. The state of open formats and free software that try to make it readable.
Read moreROS 1.0, released in January 2010 by Willow Garage under a BSD licence, organises robot software as a graph of processes that talk via publish/subscribe to separate drivers, algorithms and hardware. Architecture, design choices and limits against Player/Stage and earlier middleware.
Read moreOn 9 February 2008 a RepRap 1.0 Darwin produced more than half of its own printed parts. Technical notes on partial self-replication, the GPL licence and the 2008 FDM software chain.
Read moreThe first Maker Faire (San Mateo, 22-23 April 2006) brings to the fair projects whose value lies in reproducible documentation, not in the specimen on display. Technical notes on licences, schematics and the reproducibility of open hardware.
Read moreAt the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, an ATmega8 board is going around, aimed at people who are not engineers: published schematics, the AVR toolchain hidden behind setup() and loop(), a parts cost under thirty euros. Technical notes by Stefano Noferi.
Read moreSince 2002 MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms has been replicating a small group of computer-controlled machines — roughly 20,000 dollars of equipment — outside the campus, in Costa Rica, India, Norway and Boston. Technical notes on the model, the software and the limits, as of mid-2004.
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