The Open hardware reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Open hardware

Open Hardware (OH) is people sharing their designs with each other through the disclosure of their schematics and software systems used on their designs.

With Openhardware people meet, discuss what they are doing and ask each other for assistance in finding parts, or looking for ideas to solve a design problem. This is not just about hardware, but software of the hardware as well (GNU drivers). OH is also an opportunity to showcase designs, so others may learn from what the another persons have done.

It´s applied GNU for hardware and software.

With the raise of reconfigurable logic devices, the sharing of the logic designs is also a form of Open Hardware. Instead of sharing the schematics HDL codes are shared. Looks similar to open software but it is not. HDL descriptions are commly used to setup SoC systems either on FPGA or directly in ASIC designs. HDL modules are called "cores" or "IP" (intelectual property)

External Links

• Openhardware.
• Debian Open Hardware
• Embedded Linux/Microcontroller Project
• OpenCores

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