Re: call for seconds: on firmware
On Tue, Nov 18 2008, Luk Claes wrote:
> Note that firmware is no program AFAICS...
I do not think I agree. I think it is indeed a software program,
and I am not alone:
,----[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_software ]
| Firmware which is software programmed(sic) resident to electrically
| programmable memory devices on board mainboards or other types of
| integrated hardware carriers
`----
Frankly, a software program may be loaded into parts of the
computer heavily dependent on the processor that will run the program
instructions; the processor can be designed to read instructions from
core memory, magnetic tape, field programmable gate arrays, hardware
registers .....
Putting in hardware design details into foundation documents
seems weird; and as the number of processors and cores explode, with
new GPU's (which used to be video cards) now being able to perform
computations for the so called "central" processor, the boundary
between computations performed on the multiplying number and kinds of
processors in a computer is going to get rapidly blurred.
The DFSG has lasted us oer a decade. In another decade, I think
the distinction of "central" and "periphery" and "Cell" processors is
likely to erode; and our DFSG definition should be forward looking.
manoj
--
It is better to be bow-legged than no-legged.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/>
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C
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