On Friday 15 June 2007 01:08, Rob Landley wrote:
> On Thursday 14 June 2007 07:27:59 Bernd Paysan wrote:
> > Where is the boundary between hard- and software?
>
> Software's the bit that's infinitely replicable at zero cost.  Hardware
> tends not to be.

There's no "zero cost" for software replication, either. You have to pay for 
your media, even if today's price for a GB harddisk space is just 20 
Euro-cents. You have to pay for your bandwidth (and even if it's a 
flat-rate, the maximum amount of data you can get through is 
bandwidth*(seconds per month) for one month fee). Hardware is replicated as 
well as software, the cost for hardware replication is higher than for 
software replication, because more things are to do. The basical principle 
of producing a CD-ROM and a chip is exactly the same: lithography. 
You "print" it. A decade ago, ES2 had made chips by direct e-beam 
lithography, so the offset of the mask costs were eliminated.

With an ES2-like process, you could have your "free software CPU", where you 
design modifications yourself, send the file to the fab, and get your 
customized chip back for essentially the same price as a non-customized 
version (supposed all the tool-chain would be free software, and not 
horrible expensive Cadence/Synopsys/Mentor software).

-- 
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://www.jwdt.com/~paysan/