OSHUG #8 - Performance (MilkyMist) March 10, 2011

The MilkyMist project develops a stand-alone device in a small form factor that is capable of rendering MilkDrop-esque visuals effects in real time, with a high level of interaction with many sensors and using live audio and video streams as a base. The flexibility of the FPGA used as a central component enables advanced users to modify the design, and also permits compact integration of many interfaces (Ethernet, OSC, MIDI, DMX512, video inputs, GPIO, VGA output, USB, Irda ...), making Milkymist™ a platform of choice for the mobile VJ. But Milkymist™ is more than a visual synthesizer - it is also one of the leading open source system-on-chip designs. It is today the fastest open source system-on-chip capable of running Linux, and it comes with an extensive set of features and graphics accelerators. The IP cores that make up the system-on-chip are entirely written in open source synthesizable Verilog HDL and come with test benches and documentation, which makes Milkymist™ a great library of re-usable logic cores to serve as a base for other open source hardware.

Yann Sionneau is a twenty two year old Frenchman and soon to be graduated from the telecommunication and networking engineering school Télécom SudParis. His current interests in the main are low level software development, FPGA design, embedded systems and networks. He read his first C language book when he was 12 and fell in love with the language. He met Sebastien Bourdeauducq (aka lekernel), leader of the Milkymist project, in 2008 while doing whilst an intern at a startup co-founded by Sebastien. He ported RTEMS to Milkymist as part of the Google Summer of Code 2010 program and has been following the project for some time.

Official Website: http://oshug.org/event/8