Re: [libreplanet-discuss] I Have An Possible Chance To Meet An ARM Senior Manager

[wayne, steve]

Something that occurred to me over the weekend...

ARM essentially licenses out various forms of chip IP, whether it is
the post-synthesis IP blocks that licensees then connect to their own
chip extensions or in other cases where the vendor pays a significant
amount more for the data they actually get the ARM core VHDL, Verilog,
or whatever other HDL might be used to describe the core so that
vendor can optimize the processor they create in a very fine-tuned
manner for whatever their specific application is. (Please correct me
if my terminology or understanding of ARM's licensing schemes are
inaccurate for the purpose of this discussion)

Anyway, the point I am getting at is that when it comes down to it
processors are described in such hardware definition "language" which
in a way makes it more than just patentable hardware, but software
also--to which one might apply free or copyleft software licenses. So
I guess it would be interesting to hear the perspective of someone who
has been working at ARM for that long on such prospects as well as
what he thinks of groups like Open Cores http://opencores.org/ as a
potential competitor for ARM since it is in the enlightened self
interest of vendors who would otherwise have to engage in heavily
restrictive licensing agreements with ARM to get core IP to contribute
back to such projects.

Also, I haven't done much reading on the latest work in unifying the
various machine and platform directories in the Linux kernel's
arch/arm directory, so maybe my question could better be answered
simply by reading mailing lists, phoronix,  lwn.net, etc...but still
it would be interesting to learn his take on that effort since it
might mean that more vendor specific patches would actually make it
back to the mainline kernel. How much effort does ARM put into
directing efforts like that? It seems like they are well-placed to
make important strategic decisions in that process.

Anyway, have fun with your interview or whatever.

wayne


On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 10:54 AM, Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross
<maillist_fsf@aross.me> wrote:
> Would you have any thing you would like me to talk about?
> Whatever you want me to discuss is of interest to me. Remember I am hardware
> newbie.
>
> He is one of the 7 chaps from the beginnings of ARM and still employed.
>
> I have also asked here:
> http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/pipermail/arm-netbook/2012-October/005795.html
> (lots of discussion here)
> http://lists.en.qi-hardware.com/pipermail/discussion/2012-October/009897.html
> and on the FSFE discuss ML.
>
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> Decent, recommended by me, non-proprietary, patent free, royalty free, FOSS
> archive formats:
>
> XZ http://tukaani.org/xz/format.html
> TAR.GZ or TAR.BZ2 (If you must.)
> PEA http://www.peazip.org/pea-archiving-utility.html
>
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> http://tukaani.org/lzma/benchmarks.html
> http://www.peazip.org/peazip-compression-benchmark.html
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_archivers
>
>
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>
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> Speex (for voice, lossy) http://www.speex.org/
>
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> MKV http://www.matroska.org/
> WebM http://www.webmproject.org/
> OGG http://www.xiph.org/ogg/
> FLAC (Audio only. Use with the FLAC audio format.)
>
> Good Video formats:
>
> VP8 http://www.webmproject.org/ or H.264 (Not nice legal wise.)
> Theora http://www.theora.org/
>
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>
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>
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> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Hacker
>
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