The open source hardware (open source hardware) refers to computer hardware and electronics that is designed in the same way that free open source software. The open source hardware is part of the open source culture that takes the ideas of open source software in different fields. One example is the Simputer project.
Some of the impetus for the development of open source hardware was launched in 2002 with the Challenge to Silicon Valley, published by Kofi Annan . Due to the nature of the hardware different from software and because the concept of open source hardware is relatively new, it has no precise definition of the emerging open source hardware.
Since the hardware is associated with the direct variable costs, no definition of open source software can be applied directly without modification. Instead, the term open source hardware has been used primarily to reflect the use of free open source software with the hardware and the launch of free information regarding the hardware, often including the release of the diagrams schematics, design, size and other information about the hardware. Anyway, including the design of hardware and the distribution of elements on the motherboard (ie a notebook where you can replace elements).
With the advent of reconfigurable programmable logic devices, sharing the logical design is also a form of open source hardware. Instead of sharing diagrams schematics, HDL code is shared. This is different from open source software. HDL descriptions are commonly used to install systems in SoC FPGAs or directly in ASIC designs. HDL modules, when distributed, are called Semiconductor intellectual property cores, or core IP.