Open source hardware

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Open source hardware refers to computer, or electronics, hardware and even now other sorts of manufactured goods, that are designed in the same fashion as open-source software. One example of this is the Simputer. Open source hardware is part of the open source culture that takes open source beyond just software. Some of the impetus for the development of open source hardware was initiated in 2002 through the Challenge to Silicon Valley issued by Kofi Annan [1]. Because the nature of hardware is different than software, and because the concept of open source hardware is relatively new, no exact definition of open source hardware has emerged. Because hardware has direct variable costs associated with it, no open source software definition can directly be applied without modification. Instead, the term open source hardware has primarily been used to reflect the use of open source software with the hardware and the free release of information regarding the hardware, often including the release of schematics and other information about the hardware.

With the rise of reconfigurable logic devices, the sharing of logic designs is also a form of Open Hardware. Instead of sharing the schematics, HDL code is shared. This is different from Open Source Software. HDL descriptions are commonly used to set up SoC systems either in FPGAs or directly in ASIC designs. HDL modules, when distributed, are called semiconductor intellectual property cores, or IP cores.

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