From: Bryan Bishop (kanzure@gmail.com)
Date: Fri Nov 28 2008 - 07:49:41 MST
On Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 8:36 AM, Edward Miller
<progressive_1987@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Also, I now think that it is quite important for the designs of the hardware
> and firmware to also be available to the AGI for improvement. Obviously
> unless we create programmable bio-circuits or some such thing, it won't be
> able to change hardware on the fly while it is still young, but it would be
> best to provide the AGI with something as close to approaching that as
> possible to allow for maximum recursive self-improvement. Open hardware
> designs, or at least licensed designs, are the the closest we can get to
> that ideal currently.
http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Design
The large issue in open hardware design at the moment is that nobody
is using a standardized repository format. The GNU electronic design
automation (GEDA) package is a strong project, and it should be
investigated if you get interested in Verilog/VHDL design data (esp.
re: OpenCores), but other than this, mechanical and other hardware
design projects are either in proprietary CAD files, or in an open
well-known CAD format that isn't popular enough; normally that
wouldn't matter much, except there's not much information that is kept
on designs these days, such as metadata, or the equivalent of "make
files" for simulation and construction of design projcts. For
instance, go look over at instructables and you'll see just
photoblogs, not computationally defined information. There are some
others (and myself :-) working to improve this situation.
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing
At the moment it's looking like a good TAR format with
cross-referenced information, like points of interest in CAD files to
represent ports on common objects, such as mechanical actuators. For
electronic design only, of course, gEDA has it covered. Although we
are seeing some moves to other computational hardwares, such as people
wondering about nanosystems, carbon-intensive systems, which would
require generalized tools for addressing designs (ta-da).
- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
ph: 1 512 203 0507
Automated Design Lab, UT Austin
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