AudioScience GPLs Hardware-Abstraction Layer

Rob Dye writes "According to an article at RadioWorld Online, AudioScience has GPL'ed their hardware abstration layer that allows access to the DSP power provided on their audio interfaces. Stating that 'Linux is becoming more important to the broadcast and professional audio industry,' they also released full documentation for this code and intend to release ALSA drivers for their boards. This is terrific news for professional sound under Linux, especially considering the reluctance of video card manufacturers to open their HAL's."

About time

[thecoder42]

Hopefully the videocard makers will follow suit and release their drivers open source to the world.

Doubtful

[wowbagger]

I don't think you can draw parallels between an audio processing card and a video card:

In an audio processing card, the "magic" is in the DSP firmware loaded onto the card, which a GPL driver will simply treat as a binary blob of data stuffed in by a user space program when the driver module is loaded.

Once that "blob" is loaded, the audio streams are fairly simple, and the "magic" of the DSP is not reveiled by feeding the audio streams in - you feed in 44.1kS/s 16x2 audio, you get an MPEG stream - that operation reveils nothing about how the MPEG algorithm is implemented. Additionally, the MPEG algorithm is well documented and public knowledge (NOT public DOMAIN - public KNOWLEDGE!)

In a video card, the "magic" is in the chip's hardware design - in that respect it is simillar to the audio card.

With one significant exception: the way you "feed" the data into the card reveils MUCH about the implementation of the underlying algorithms, many of which are trade secrets.

So while I applaud AudioScience for this move, and while this move provides a good example to the video card makers, their situation is sufficiently different from AudioScience that, at this time, I doubt this will make much difference to them.

Now, if things progress to the point where Linux is a significant fraction of the video card manufacturer's market....

Quick question

[GreatOgre]

Is it possible for the video card manufacturers to build their boards such that the information about the chipsets, algorithms, etc. are not easily revealed? If so, why don't they do so?

Re:Quick question

[wowbagger]

It's due to the complexity of the operations done by a video card.

Consider what must happen every frame of your frag-fest in UT2003:

1) The game must hand a list of polygons to the card. This poly-list contains the position of the poly in 3 dimensional space and what texture map to use.
2) The game must also tell the card where the camera is looking, how wide the field of view is, and the rate at which depth changes effect the view.
3) The card must then transform the 3D polys into a list of 2D poly.
4) The c

Re:Quick question

[Hard_Code]

But most (all?) graphics programmers are programming to a high level interface like opengl or directx *anyway* (and in turn these can only use whatever the driver for the card exposes, right?), so why even bother exposing more than is necessary? Anything you can't hide, open source. I'm buying hardware, not software. If "hidden surface removal" must live in the driver, and is complicated, open source the damn thing and compete on hardware merits. The programmability is even being abstracted through mid-

Re:Quick question

[wowbagger]

If "hidden surface removal" must live in the driver, and is complicated, open source the damn thing and compete on hardware merits.

But that is exactly what the hardware venders DON'T want to do, and that is why they don't open their drivers.

Re:About time

[Trogre]

Have you ever tried getting a G440 to run with dual screen and acceleration under X 4.3?

the light is shining

[castlec]

professional rendering has been on linux for a while, mostly under proprietary apps, but they recognized the need to support more than just the proprietary OSs. It's good to see professional audio begin to make its slice available to the free world. this could be the beginning of the end of the large recording studios.

Re:the light is shining

[castlec]

My view is this: Make a system accessible and people will use it. I have no doubt that the systems you use have mature software that is very reliable, however very few people have access to it. I agree with you that just because something is free does not mean that it is better, however, you neglect the possiblity that just because something is free doesn't mean it can't be better. This is an opportunity for the little guy to produce more of his own music, cheaper. I know quite a few people producing th

This may change the entire hardware industry!

[jgardn]

This could be the first step towards a more open and cooperative hardware industry. Today, it is practically impossible to obtain the specs and paramaters of existing hardware. Maybe in the future, hardware manufacturers will publish their specs and intentions as they release new hardware. Open Source could turn into Open Hardware.

Yes...we need more control!!

[thenarftwit]

It is about time that the hardware opened up...this would enable the development of all sorts of cool unforseen applications of existing hardware which would incidentally mean more sales to the hardware makers (it would also mean the hardware makers would have to open up the designs, but that would benefit everybody by having pressure to make good, clean designs, not cheap, quick shorcuts). It would also be cool if really big FPGA technology was cheaplly availible so that people could explore different har

off topic, but...

[lfourrier]

why does audioscience GPLs something that is then GPL'ed ?
Why not GPLed ?
English is not my mother tongue and I wish to comprehend the logic of this gramatical construction.
Using names for verbs is, if not correct, admitted practice in engineering circles (at least). But using acronyms as verbs seems much more uncommon.
Can someone explain what is the "norm"(if there is one) for such constructions (UPPER vs lower, ' or not ', ...)

Re:off topic, but...

[bill_mcgonigle]

why does audioscience GPLs something that is then GPL'ed ?
Why not GPLed ?

Audioscience can GPL something.
As audioscience GPL's something (some sort of present progressive, I think...)
Audioscience GPL'ed something (past tense).

The reason for the apostrophe is not to indicate posession, but to deliniate the end of the acronym . Expecially with mixed-case acronyms, or perhaps a medium restricted to all upper-case, it can be difficult to tell where the end of an acryonym is and the modifiers begin.

Re:off topic, but...

[bill_mcgonigle]

Of course this is not "proper" English, but instead seems to be a variation spwaned by the Internet/tech culture.

No, this was in my high school English text, and that was a while ago.

Some newer texts, esp. MW, advocate only using an apostrophe in the case of an abbreviated acronym (the M.D.'s are on call) and using mixed case for non-abbreviated acronyms (the CPUs are fast) but if you're WRITING IN ALL CAPS AND YOU SAY THE CPUS ARE FAST it's hard to know if S is part of the acronym or not, so the apostr

Re:off topic, but...

[Skjellifetti]

Is it to delineate the end of the acronym or for the same reason that do not becomes don't? The apostrophe represents the missing letters in L[icens]ed. To quote Frank Zappa, "The crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe."