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| Authored by: dio gratia on Saturday, August 18 2012 @ 08:06 PM EDT |
Offsetting the lack of independence in programming FPGAs every major vendor
offers their tools for free. The draw back is that you are constrained to
adopting their methodologies.
Some number of years ago a University project involving evolutionary programming
to in this case a distinguish between the spoken words 'yes' and 'no'. It
required knowledge of the bitstream programming format that may no longer be
available today. They discovered the resulting programs (designs) were
individual device specific, depending on specific AC timing characteristics
instead of the usual speed bin grading.
In this case you'd realize the ability to innovate led to no useful results.
That might not always be the case and the long lag time between a pent up need
such as incremental programming and when that need is met by the vendor could be
seen to slow down innovation.
There was also a high number of patents around FPGA architectures around 2000,
influenced by reconfigurable computing that stifled FPGA use, along with a
number of patents in telecommunications that might have made today's smart phone
patent wars appear mild in comparison.
The answer to the threats blocking innovation is publishing prior art and
getting a ground swell of interest in applications. You could recognize the
concurrent inability of the lone inventor to practice their related art. For a
while we were seeing universities producing their own silicon then locking up
the use behind patents and of course not gaining any traction and perishing in
the marketplace.
I'd contemplate patents as being the major block to innovation, along with
things like the DMCA. There's also a certain amount of secrecy on internal
structure for purposes of competition as well as likely hiding detail from
exposure to patent litigation when tens of thousands of patents are granted in
related art each year. And as our old friend Solon was want to say 'Who
benefits?'.
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