IBM is offering a free open source implementation of the IEEE-1275 Open Firmware standard. Slimline Open Firmware (SLOF) can be used by software engineers developing boot firmware, operating systems, or applications for PowerPC, or by hardware engineers interested in fast bring-up of PowerPC-based systems, according to IBM's DeveloperWorks website. More information about Open Firmware can be found via Google, or at the IEEE 1275 website. More details about SLOF can be found here .
The nice thing about Open Firmware is that it allows one plug-in PCI card to be used in any chassis that understands Open Firmware, with very little concern for the host machine architecture. The combination of Open Firmware and IBM's SLOF announcement is a potential windfall for embedded systems with pluggable PCI busses, because it opens the door to the use of commodity PC hardware (and their aggressive price points) for embedded applications. The downside to Open Firmware is that PCI cards designed for Wintel boxes don't use Open Firmware; they use a ghastly technique where actual x86 machine instructions are stored in a dedicated memory area in the card itself (whose idea was *that*?!). There are a lot of nifty chipsets on PCI cards that I wish were available in affordable OEM-friendly packages, i.e. just the chips. Graphics controllers come to mind, as do gigabit ethernet controllers and GSM adapters.
Considering the PCI cards available for Sun and Apple machines, what sorts of embedded applications could YOU now realize?
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