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MilkyMist One - Open Source Hardware VJ Platform

The MilkyMist One - Open Source Hardware VJ Platform

I've long been excited at the possibilities hinted at by programmable logic. It's hard to say for certain when I first heard about this technology, but it was likely around eleven years ago and via mention of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's book on cracking DES. And although I didn't know it at the time, I worked with equipment that was built around FPGA technology some six or seven years prior to this - as I recall maintaining core telecomms switching equipment that comprised of large boards curiously festooned with seemingly identical Xilinx packages.

Fast-forward to the noughties and the promise of performance gains approaching those that are associated with ASICs, combined with a vastly reduced barrier to entry and a shorter development cycle, has caught the attention of open source hardware developers. With a community building up around open source chip design, and FPGAs being put to use in demanding signal processing applications such as the Universal Software Radio Peripheral, to cite but two projects out of many more.

Last year the Open Source Hardware User Group (OSHUG) heard about another SDR application of FPGA technology, in the form of the High Performance Software-Defined Radio project, where an Altera device is used to implement a digital down-conversion receiver capable of processing 130 million 16 bit samples per second. Try that in software on a general purpose processor! Earlier this month FPGA technology was a topic of discussion once again at an OSHUG meeting, as we learnt of its application in a "comprehensive open source solution for the live synthesis of interactive visual effects for VJs (video performance artists)". Once again signal processing algorithms were being targeted to hardware in return for substantial performance gains. However, the system's general purpose processor (GPP) was also implemented in the FPGA, thus resulting in a tightly integrated SoC solution and one where all the logic including the GPP was open source. Taking pains to avoid features specific to the Xilinx FPGA platform utilised, and to remove those present in the Lattice GPP core employed. Thereby making it trivial to port the SoC design to another FPGA platform.

Having arrived firmly at the conclusion that programmable logic is particularly relevant to open source hardware, we decided that it was about time that we arranged an OSHUG meeting focusing purely on this technology. To that end the next OSHUG meeting on Thursday 21st April will feature an introduction to developing for programmable logic, a talk on its application in computer conservation, and an introduction to the OpenCores community, chip design and the OpenRISC microprocessor.

Open source (hardware and software!) advocate, Treasurer and Director of the Free and Open Source Silicon Foundation, organiser of Wuthering Bytes technology festival and founder of the Open Source Hardware User Group.
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