Open Graphics Project Looking For Funding 266
An anonymous reader writes "The Open Graphics Project was formed last year to create a free and open source friendly graphics card. According to this article on KernelTrap, the project lost their company backing a couple of months ago, but has decided to go forward with the effort with money from the developer's own pockets. The team plans to release a prototype card to the public in November, at which time they'll need to find $1 million dollars for the effort to continue." I continue to wonder about the Open Hardware projects but call me skeptical- people contribute to Open Source because it typically costs little more than time.
FREE (Score:5, Funny)
Re:FREE (Score:5, Funny)
Time is hardly free! (Score:5, Insightful)
Time is te most precious commodity of all. Most of us don't realize this until we notice how little we have left (terminal illness diagnosis, old age, a loved one dying, in the middle of a motorcycle wreck, etc).
All of life is a barter system. Most people in "modern", "civilized" societies simply fail to recognize this, and think of money as the only medium that matters in trade.
This isn't in any way dissing people who put time into FOSS (I do). It's just a reality check against the concept that it's free if you "only" put time into it. Rather, it is more dearly bought.
Re:Time is hardly free! (Score:2)
I'm a contract engineer, paid an hourly rate.
That means that I sell my life, in 1-hour units.
And these hours pay for house, car, furniture, tv, gas, electricity, toilet paper, dog, food, dog food, etc.
Anybody who thinks time is free is an idiot.
Re:FREE (Score:4, Informative)
Free != Open
GPL == (Open && Free)
Open Hardware == Open
Open Hardware != Free
In other words, a manufacturer could in theory create a card from an open hardware spec and charge for it. The idea being that said hardware would have specifications fully available. Further I would assume the hardware designer would require modifications to be made available.
If you've dealt with various Linux binary-only drivers in the past few years you'd know what the coolness was.
Hell, the coolness extends to Windows, too, as hackers could then modify windows drivers or create their own.
Yeah, I know, you were lookin for the +4 Funny, but some folks are going to read it and take it seriously
Open Hardware doesnt work (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Open Hardware doesnt work (Score:5, Informative)
Based on their current work plan, an FPGA-based project board will be available in November "that serves as the development platform for a much less expensive ASIC-based solution (second quarter of 2006), contingent on available funding."
I don't know if they've been paying any attention (I presume they have), but FPGAs have gotten extremely cheap [avnet.com] as of late. AVNet lists the Xilinx XC3S200-4VQ100C with the following rates:
1 - $14.7950
25 - $12.8700
100+ - $11.2200
While I don't like assuming, in this case it's fairly safe to say that the price would be even lower for quantities of 1000 or more. I see little difficulty with them being able to mass produce an FPGA card for ~$50 US. (Something of a sweet spot price point in computer the computer industry.) The only real reason I could see for going to ASICs is to reduce the cost of very large runs, and/or increasing the performance of the onboard chip.
Do you have any idea how complex a GPU is? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Do you have any idea how complex a GPU is? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, they're not to bad on complexity. Most of the chip complexity comes from constantly pushing the boundaries of performance. Even then, a majority of the tricky work is actually done in the software drivers.
You're quoting prices for very SMALL FPGAs. What makes you think we could fit something as complex as a GPU into a 3S200?
A 3S200 is not that small of a chip. Fairly good sized processors can be written on it, often with quite a bit of space left over. Even if they do need a larger chip (e.g. a Virtex III) they should still check the prices. Xilinx has been making sure that their chips are extremely affordable in large quantities.
In quantites smaller than 1000? Well, it's difficult to get a good price out of ASICs as well.
Re:Do you have any idea how complex a GPU is? (Score:3, Interesting)
GPUs are not complex? Then why do we only have a very small number of companies making them? And, what tricky work is done in software? Shading? Bump mapping? All of the big functions are performed in hardware.
A 3S200 is not that small of a chip.
It is a small chip when you're talking about
Re:Do you have any idea how complex a GPU is? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes. Shaders, bump mappers, and other effects are micro programs that run on the GPU. This design became so common that it evolved into complete GPU languages such as CG.
At an average of 4 transistors/gate, this is equivalent to ~600,000 transistors. Compare this with the latest offering from NVidia and ATI, which are pushing the 300 million transistor mark. So, you need 500 FPGAs to get the equivalent resources (at a reduced horse power).
Re:Do you have any idea how complex a GPU is? (Score:3, Informative)
Interesting. So when did they decide to switch from the XCS2000? (The chip listed in the spec sheet.)
Sure, you'd probably be able to make a *2D* core fit into a tiny FPGA, but a full OpenGL shader pipeline? Not likely.
Fully 1.3 compatible? No, but you could fake it in software.
Re:Open Hardware doesnt work (Score:3, Interesting)
We got a very simple rasterizer and framebuffer, and that's it. We spent weeks optimizing to get it to fit on there and run at 50 Mhz. Had we added hardware division so that you didn't have to send actual plane equations, or crazy complicated things like matrix transforms, we would have had to have a whole 'nother chip.
Small Xilinxes are great for prototypin
FPGA cost is only one aspect (Score:2)
You're right, and in fact if the production run is small enough and the design is not too complex FPGAs are actually quite a bit cheaper than custom ASICs or gate arrays (this is becase although the setup costs are huge for a custom ASIC, the production cost is relatively much smaller). In the case of an open graphics card however there are other factors:
* The GPU is probably too com
Re:FPGA cost is only one aspect (Score:2)
I've noticed a PDF they have on their site that has the specs. Apparently, they are using a Spartan 3 2000. The rest of their specs suggest a relatively simple GPU for the time being, so they should have no trouble fitting into the chip they chose.
* most importantly...SPEED. Those ultracheap FPGAs are too slow to handle 3-D processing for megapixe
Re:Open Hardware doesnt work (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the already-mentioned FPGAs have shown that it's possible to build hardware that, while not as cheap as a fully mass-produced thing, can still prove fairly cost-effective.
I used to have an Atari ST [wikipedia.org] (actually, still do - except it's only boote
Re:Open Hardware doesnt work (Score:2)
Even going with 130 nm technology (which is already "outdated") can cost a million dollars just for the masks. Yield, packaging, and other issues can easily push up the costs to several times that.
I'm a bit skeptical about that. We run 0.25um stuff here all the time, 5 layer metal, and the mask cost numbers I've heard are in the $100k range for a dedicated production mask. Shuttle costs are well below that (depending if your fab of choice runs shuttles and you can get on them). I just checked MOSIS [mosis.org] a
If you think open hardware won't work (Score:5, Interesting)
Up to a certain complexity, fab services are available even to home hobbyists for a reasonable cost, and for large runs it is quite inexpensive. The REALLY big cost is in SET-UP costs to produce ASICs. Besides, fabrication costs are no different than for proprietary hardware--the licensing model for the intellectual property has nothing to do with how hard it is to physically build it.
Furthermore, even if the production model will be expensive to get going, these days hardware engineering is like programming--you don't sit at a desk taping out masks and such like they did when they made the 6502 processor. Its all source code in Verilog or VHDL these days. Therefore, if Linux can be successful then why not open hardware?
It is in the development/engineering where these cards can have an edge over ATI and NVidia--they pay massive dollars to hire people to design the hardware and drivers and lawyers to keep it all secret. This project has no monetary design costs. I for one don't even care if they don't ever produce a single card themselves, as long as they get the evaluation FPGA board and all the source designs/code complete. THAT is what is most important, besides having some manufacurers pick up the design.
Money is the least important part of this project. The industry is going to start stagnating now becasue the players are much too proprietary--by hoarding information and research they duplicate efforts and slow or stop development of interoperability standards. Insistence on keeping drivers proprietary hurts the software industry (particularly open projects and smaller proprietary competitors) and props up Microsoft.
Last but not least, an open design lowers the barrier of entry for smaller players and others who do not have graphics IP--right now card makers are at the mercy of two major players who design and make chips. If this project succeeds, many other chip makers can make graphics cards AND chips. Also, since the design is open, even if a chip maker discontinues or goes bankrupt others can use the design themselves. Widely licensing to many chipmakers is the biggest reason why the 6502 CPU was so successful--it was produced by MOSTek/Commodore, Rockwell, NCR, GTE, WDC, Synertek and many more. If Commodore hoarded its design and made all the chips themselves, do you really think so many computer makers, including arch-rivals Apple and Atari, would've stuck with the 6502 for so long if they only had one company--a sometimes competitor--to depend on for their CPU? Even if the 6502 was the cheaper option I doubt they would be comfortable with that. WDC and Rockwell also kept that design alive lonnger and improved it where Commodore wouldn't (CMOS version, added more defined opcodes, 16-bit extensions...).
If these guys play their cards right--especially if they can put out a few thousand GPU chips and get the ball rolling for others to jump on board it could revolutionise the industry and level the playing field for Linux and others on the desktop--and the more people on board the more rapidly the design could be improved. And unlike the case with the 6502, these improvements could be shared and standardised--and chip makers who contribute these enhancements can still have "first mover" advantage as an incentive to innovate.
If I was a well-to-do player in the Linux/open source community like Bob Young I'd certainly throw a few million their way...
I have trouble seeing... (Score:4, Interesting)
Hardware is quite a bit different then software, being a physical tangible item that isn't easily copied/manufactured.
While I do wish them well, I still have trouble seeing how this will really make headway.
I do know that if what they come up with is capable and affordable, as in the hardware won't cost me more then my current PC cost to build, I will give their resulting product a go.
Re:I have trouble seeing... (Score:4, Informative)
Tell that to Pad2Pad [pad2pad.com]. I can send them a computer file, and they can send me back a complete board (or run of boards).
In fact, hardware has become closer to software than you think. Thanks to languages such as VHDL [wikipedia.org] and Verilog [wikipedia.org], you can *code* a chip and test it without ever pressing a piece of hardware. And if you use an FPGA, you can litterally download the chip design into the processor and have a working model of your design.
If you ever hear about "chip IP", they're referring to the practice of developing a chip design and then selling the design to hardware manufacturers. ARM is a particularly well known exmaple of this.
Re:I have trouble seeing... (Score:2)
Re:I have trouble seeing... (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, you just use an FPGA [wikipedia.org]. They're completely programmable processors that are very similar in design to static RAM. They can be reprogrammed on the fly, and can represent any chip desired. (Limited only by the number of logic units.) They used to be used only for prototyping due to high cost and low speed, but today they are very competitive on the market. Many a manufacturer has taken to shipping the FPGA instead of paying for the manufacture of a custom chip (usually an ASIC [wikipedia.org]).
You should go purchase an FPGA board [xilinx.com] and see all of the [opencores.org] fun stuff [fpgaarcade.com] you can program it to do!
Re:I have trouble seeing... (Score:3, Interesting)
The performance gap between FPGAs and ASICs have dwindled in recent years, with FPGAs taking advantage of smaller fab processes than ASICs currently have readily available. That's why Xilinx preaches their "Make Spartan your ASIC" line and gets away with it.
That's why I see this as being a difficult to get running kind of venture. Unless they can perf
Re:That sounds really interesting. (Score:2)
Re:I have trouble seeing... (Score:2, Interesting)
*currently, drivers for video cards tend to be binary-only or reverse-engineered and not fully impleme
Re:I have trouble seeing... (Score:2)
You're Skeptical! (Score:4, Insightful)
People also contribute to FOSS out of a sense of duty, or of pride, or because of the perception of a superior product, or because all the cool kids are doing it, or to pad their resume, or to save money in the long run, or out of sheer necessity, or to scratch an itch, or because they are bored... et cetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
-theGreater Counterexample.Re:You're Skeptical! (Score:2)
Re:You're Skeptical! (Score:2)
And why didn't I use my main computer? Can't it cost me my job becuase I was testing too muc
Re:You're Skeptical! (Score:2)
Really? Silly me, all I thought I needed was a testing board [xilinx.com] and some hardware descriptions [opencores.org].
Thanks to FPGAs, complete hardware designs can be written (in source code no less!), downloaded directly to the chip, tested, and then sold for a profit without ever speaking to a chip fab or hardware factory. And places like Pad2Pad [pad2pad.com] allow for custom test boards to be built for a VERY low cost.
If the Open Graphics Hardware project needs a milli
Re:You're Skeptical! (Score:2)
And by that they mean 10000 boards at about $100-$200 dollars each. If they manage to sell that many of their first revision product, they will continue development.
At least, that is how I understood it.
Re:You're Skeptical! (Score:2)
Re:You're Skeptical! (Score:2)
From what I understand... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:From what I understand... (Score:3, Informative)
Also, a memory bandwidth of 6.4 GB/sec is
Re:From what I understand... (Score:2)
Re:From what I understand... (Score:2)
The million dollars might be better spent getting ATi to open up one or two of their high-end 3D cards? Especially if KDE and Gnome
I'll buy one (Score:2)
Re:I'll buy one (Score:2, Interesting)
How is this different from open standards? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How is this different from open standards? (Score:2)
Re:How is this different from open standards? (Score:3, Insightful)
But really, it is less about standards. It's more about open. None of the existing manufacturers publish their hardware specs enough to allow open drivers. The alternatives are to reverse engineer it (very difficult), convence the manufacturere to publish specs (not likely) or make your own damn card (expensive).
Actually, if some
Re:How is this different from open standards? (Score:2)
Sadly, they've since closed off access to the specs, even the same information that was available in 1999. They do provide drivers for their AGP cards, but my old Proliant 800 with its lack of AGP is left without a well-supported card. Th
Where do I sign up ?! (Score:2)
But seriously, I don't see much need for this. Can someone explain it better than Timothy Miller? Although I was impressed with the fancy Gantt chart [gitk.com]
Naysayers rejoice (Score:4, Insightful)
1. The hardware will be underpowered because this group has little experience (if any) designing bleeding edge graphics hardware
2. The card will be overpriced because this group doesn't have the manufacturing clout of NVidia or ATI
3. The drivers will suck because nobody's going to buy this card and nobody will develop for it.
4. The drivers will suck MORE because of all the trans-gamers out there who dual boot, they won't get the card because it won't be supported in Windows (or just very weakly).
5. The company has no financial backing, so they will crash and burn early on and we will be stuck with abandoned hardware.
6. This time, effort and money would be better spent harassing the existing graphics card manufacturers into opening up their drivers, as least the non-trade-secret parts so we can do our magic on it.
7. (asbestos ON) I still don't think any Linux Distro in its current state should even be considered for desktop or gaming. But that's me being an elitist prick. Come up with a cleaner development model, make it "just work", and redo the whole windowing system into something that is NOT X, and maybe then we can start talking. The reason OSX works so well is because it does fifty backflips to almost completely hide the underlying Unix layer. It's not because I know Linux that I want to put up with its PMS all the time, sometimes it's nice to just click things with your brain switched off.
Re:Naysayers rejoice (Score:2)
Re:Naysayers rejoice (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you for commenting.
Is 6.4 GB/sec memory bandwidth "underpowered"? Perhaps compared to bleeding-edge Windows cards, but not compared to the latest cards FULLY supported by open source drivers. Your typical Linux server board sports a Rage XL. Furthermore, this group has a long history of experience with extremely high-end graphics cards used in air traffic control and medical systems, driving multiple high-res displays at resolutions like 2560x2048 and 3840x2400.
The initial product isn't really a graphics card. It's an FPGA project board that's a quarter the price of the next comparable product. The OGP ASIC-based product will be competitively priced. It will be on par (or better) in performance and price with other embedded solutions, and it will be affordable as a graphics card.
There are already a good number of driver developers involved in the project, some of whom have gotten funding from their employers to work on it.
We fully intend to have the maximum Windows support possible. While the card isn't intended for games, the specs make are sufficient for Quake 3.
We've come up with a project plan that doesn't require financial backing, other than a few thousand dollars out of our own pockets. What more could you ask for?
Harrassing only makes companies mad. Who are you anyhow? You're a Linux user, representing maybe 5% of the graphics market. If ATI or nVidia were to dedicate proper resources to Linux support, it would cost them more money than it makes them. Plus, ATI has a FAQ that states that they CANNOT open source their drivers due to IP licensing issues.
This is a WHOLE other topic, but in large part, I agree with you.
Re:Color-blind rejoice (Score:2)
Re:Color-blind rejoice (Score:2)
Making a 9 megapixel display board is probably fairly cheap if you don't need a GPU. ATC displays are generally 2D from what I've seen (which isn't a lot, I admit). Granted, the planes are flying in 3D, but the displays are generally top-down with altitude info displayed.
That being the case, you just need an old-fashioned dumb video board with lots of RAM on it (well, without textures to worry about you really only ne
Re:Naysayers rejoice (Score:2, Informative)
1. The hardware will be underpowered because this group has little experience (if any) designing bleeding edge graphics hardware
It is designed to be underpowered. It is not going to support a billion triangles per second. It is designed to provide many basic features of the video card, and provide them well, in an opensource way.
2. The card will be overpriced because this group doesn't have the manufacturing clout of NVidia or
Re:Naysayers rejoice (Score:2)
Putting 3D support aside for the moment, it's worth noting that NVidia produces one of the best VESA BIOSes on the market today. As such, their cards tend to be very easy to support and work far better than any competitor.
The real issue is that most people want 3D support so they can pl
Re:Naysayers rejoice (Score:2)
What that means is that if you have a TNT2, and Nvidia drops binary drivers for it, you are looking at buying a new card if you need any 3d out of it.
As the VESA issue is concerned, it is nice that they have a good VESA implementation, given that practically no one has completely implemented it ever. Unfortunately VESA is a standard that is a bit too old. It would be lovely if th
Re:Naysayers rejoice (Score:2)
Well... yes. VESA is a beast from another time altogether. The fact that it even works in x86 Protected Mode is a miracle to behold. But since it *does* work, it makes for an excellent method of out-of-the-box graphics support. Without it, the cute little QNX-on-a-floppy demo couldn't exist.
BTW, you seem to be very well versed in graphics iss
Re:Naysayers rejoice (Score:2)
I think at this point for every user linux would gain by ditching X, they would lose an existing user. I might have agreed with you 2 or 3 years ago, when X was stagnating badly under the XFree86 team. Now that it is starting to make significant progress once again under X.org, it's become clear to many people that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with X that cannot be fixed.
The biggest problem with replacing X is that everything in Linux
Re:Naysayers rejoice (Score:2)
The people complaining about X are those people who don't understand what they're talking about. The biggest things holding back X performance aren't their favorite pet peeves like network connectivity, usermode graphics, or code that older than they are, but rather the lack of good drivers and system configuration.
Funding Efforts (Score:2)
Open ARCHITECTURE (Score:5, Informative)
(1) The OGP product is OPEN ARCHITECTURE. It's intended to be compatible with open source SOFTWARE.
(2) There is a specific plan to make the "blueprints" to the hardware also available under GPL and LGPL at various points. ALL of the IP and schematics for the first product (the prototype board) will be open source.
(3) Hardware always costs money.
(4) This is a real product, being designed by experienced hardware engineers who have all the expertise necessary to do it. To the hardware designers it is not a "hobby".
It's not about graphics (Score:2)
Thie is a highly visible open hardware project.
If it is successful, more
The last one I came across was the penguin processor board that fitted into a memory slot, but it didn't have wide appeal (naturally).
If you have an FPGA based PCI/AGP card, sure as hell you are going to use it for more than graphics.
Folk will use them for SSL accelorators, crypto-disk accelerators, or anything that benefits from re-de
How badly do you want it? (Score:2)
How badly do you want there to be open hardware?
10 cents worth? 10 dollars worth? Not badly enough to be bothered to put in into monetary terms?
No sweat if you don't, but if you do want open hardware, how badly?
Sam
Re:How badly do you want it? (Score:2, Funny)
free != free (Score:4, Informative)
It would definately be interesting to have an fpga based board with the board programming code source available and the hardware specs available. That way, you could fiddle with your board and get it to do what you want, just like open source. It could be a viable business if they were charging for the boards themselves, but letting people play with the internal components a bit more than with proprietary. I can see lots of hardware geeks / hobbyists buying them just for the experience of playing.
Maybe an interesting start (Score:2)
TO try and fabricate these devices, seems like a waste of money, when you could just licence the designs, and let individual hardware companies produce them.
OR they could concentrate on producing hardware that can be updated through software, and let coders concentrate on producing better code for the hardware. Like Open cores.
But th
Will their card be any better? (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems, the sophistication of the commercial offerings is rather substantial. True, Xorg/XFree86 are usually unable to take full advantage of it.
But will the new cards not be hardware-limited to what the commercial ones can already do even with the incomplete drivers?
Re:Will their card be any better? (Score:2, Interesting)
Why not try and identify what's holding back ATI/NVidia from releasing open-source drivers, and targetting those niggles to make our system palatable to
Know your market! (Score:4, Interesting)
Most will already have the latest kickass graphics card in a machine, so will NOT be interested in a lower performing graphics card simply because they can get all the hardware specs for it.
What they will be interested in is if it has something cool or kinky about it.
Such things would be... do the whole lot on reprogrammable fpga so people can really customise... provide some interesting DSP like four AL3101 chips or a sharc so it can do audio processing too.... make a low power version for tiny/embedded computers (put it on a gumstix board!).... put a xscale on the card so it's a computer.... provide interesting buffered IO so you can use it as a video signal generator...
It has to have a unique selling point over and above being open source!
Re:Know your market! (Score:2)
Re:Know your market! (Score:4, Insightful)
Most will already have the latest kickass graphics card in a machine
I am a geek and an open source die hard.
I absolutely do not have the lasest kickass card precicely because there is no open source support for those newer cards. Currently I have an ATI9200se which is the best card I could find that has fully functional open source xorg drivers that do 2d and 3d accelleration. It cost me about 25UKP. Hardly the latest kick ass card.
I am willing to pay around 100UKP for a better card if is fully supported with open source drivers.
I am not really interested in a reprogrammable fpga but I would support a company that provided it because I can see that others would be interested.
For me, being fully supportive of open source _is_ the unique selling point.
Re:Know your market! (Score:2)
The "open source" card being discussed will not be even remotely comparable to t
Re:Know your market! (Score:2)
Absolutely. I too only have some old shit card (I don't even know what it is) that doesn't even run OpenGL. I wish it would. But I'm not buying Nvidia as when I installed the drivers on my work machine, I got random hard lockups.
Just looked, and it is actually an NVidia in here. (0000:00:05.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV11 [GeForce2 MX/MX 400] (rev b2)).
Re:Know your market! (Score:2)
1320 frames in 5.0 seconds = 264.000 FPS
Killer App for this: MPEG decompression in HW (Score:5, Interesting)
Nvidia and ATI have yet to really address the MythTV crowd with a passively cooled, inexpensive (who cares about 3D specs for their myth box?) AGP card that can do all the heavy lifting of decoding HD MPEGs.
pchdtv.com amd mythtv.org are pretty much the only places you'd need to "advertise".
You've got a community of enthusiasts that understand the point of open specs, are willing to experiment with hardware to "get it right" and aren't being well served by the incumbents. Sounds like a match to me...
Re:Killer App for this: MPEG decompression in HW (Score:3, Insightful)
XVideo being one of them. Mpeg decoding is another. Motion Compensation / Deinterlacing would be cool too. Compositing so that X can be pretty would be nice.
And perhaps, if the card is a reprogrammable card, then what would be cool is an ability to customize the card to the needs of the user. Say I would like compositing, but do not plan to run MPEG movies, so I will have one and not have another. However,
Re:Killer App for this: MPEG decompression in HW (Score:2)
Re:Know your market! (Score:2)
I am a geek, hacker, open source die hard and proud owner of a MX400.
Geeks != gamers. AFAIC, as long as it run Neverwinter Nights ...
How to make this project work (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say, motherboard producers, who today pay royalties for on-board graphics cards.
Forget about asking the "community" to put up the money, it's not going to happen.
Re:How to make this project work (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't be so sure about that. I'd be willing to contribute $200 to the development effort if the validity of the project can be authenticated (I don't know these people from a hole in the wall), so I can be sure my money is actually being used as advertised.
It only takes 5000 people donating this amount to raise $1M. Contrary to popular mythology, many of us use Free software not because it's free, but because it's Free.
F
Re:How to make this project work (Score:3, Interesting)
Or, instead of donations they could make it an actual investment opportunity. Since I know I'm going to buy one of these cards when they come to market and pretty sure others will too, I'd be willing to speculate a $1000 or two. Open hardware could just be where real money can be made on open source.
I'm having trouble with this (Score:2)
But from reading their site, one of the first issues that popped into my head was "what hardware maker would want to put themselves through all of those requirements?!" Okay, so they save a lot of money on the R&D side of things but is it worth it to them? I guess we'll wait and see but from the outset, I see a lot of asian manufacturers picking up the plans o
IBM to adopt the project? (Score:2, Interesting)
If you think this is the stupidest idea ever.... (Score:2)
Re:If you think this is the stupidest idea ever... (Score:2)
Advantage? (Score:2)
If this project took off I could see it becoming something impressive, but at the moment open-source-but-outdated isn't much better than a card with a card that
Donations? Pre-order? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is there a way that I could give $20-$50 dollars donation unconditionally (I know this is not a charitable donation), and then guarantee that I will purchase the card if it costs less than $200?
Perhaps the developers could offer incentives for people who do this. I do not know hardware, but I assume that FPGA card is the same as ASIC, except that it can be reprogrammed. In that case an incentive could be the card, which then does not have to be repurchased once revisions are made in hardware. (the donation then could be the difference between the FPGA cost and the ASIC cost, and then the donation is not donation, but partial-preorder).
Basically, I am a bit uncomfortable with parting with too much money with no guarantees, but I am willing to part with some. More, if there are more incentives. But idea of pure pre-order will not work, as there is no guarantee that the card will be finished, and $200 is more than I am willing to just throw away.
Now this is someplace.... (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't think anyone has mentioned pcHDTV yet... (Score:2)
Tax Deductible Open-Source Contribution (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd like more info on this if it's already in effect. Is a contribution to the Mozilla Foundation tax deductible?
Way to go, guys! (Score:2)
Morph project into an economically interesting one (Score:2)
As I understand it, the project is for hobbyists' fun (which is fine!) but does not make obvious economic sense (a problem with hardware projects it seems).
I'd like to suggest they consider morphing the project to make it more interesting (depth) and applicable (breadth).
For one thing I have noted in a past thread on this a number of things that would make me buy the card, maybe they sho
I want a few of them (Score:2)
Right now, nvidia is good for gaming but installing and configuring thier drivers for anything other is a pita.
So give me a good open solution for multidisplay and I will be ok to pay a little more for a little less power as long as I have the desktop performances that I need.
Gimp in itself, thanks to its magic ui is begging for a multi display envirronment
btw, I was also OK to buy a silent, electricity frie
A less grim future? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm talking about DRM, TCPA, police-ware, Palladium - whatever it's called now - the only substantial threat to our freedom of computing movement. Not just the ability to install this week's trendy flavor of Linux on your Gateway, but the whole concept of using a computer as anything more than a glorified VCR is at steak here. The Internet is a powerful tool, for the rapid dissemination of un
Just a thought- (Score:2)
One question... (Score:2)
Re:One question... (Score:2)
Re:No money? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:No money? (Score:5, Interesting)
The OGP is based around open specs.
Re:Open Source Friendly ! (Score:4, Insightful)
Most people wont be able to do much with it , but if the project takes flight and i hope it does . Then we could all be able to get a lovely cheap open piece of hardware that by its very being will be fully supported in the OSS world.
It will be a great learning tool aswell
Which in all means for those of us without great need for much 3d procesing in our workstation computer or server computer..
A reliable, cheap
Re:Open Source Friendly ! (Score:2)
Re:this is great (Score:5, Informative)
program an FPGA to do something faster than a
modern computer can do.
Now that's just nonsense. This is the thinking of "More MHz is better". The truth is that a custom chip design targetted at a specific task can easily out-perform a more generic chip. For example, the SaarCor [saarcor.de] can render a raytraced scene many times faster than a Pentium IV, using nothing more than off-the-shelf FPGA hardware running at 1/300th the MHz.
That being said, it's doubtful that the OGP will outperform someone like NVidia or ATI who already build custom chips. But it might be able to give them a decent run for their money.
Re:this is great (Score:2)
It doesn't really even have to give them ``a run for their money''. It just has to give decent, hi-res, 2D performance with no hassles using Libre drivers on Libre operating systems. The five percent or so of the video card market who use Linux and the BDSs may not sound like much, but it's a niche these guys could have all to themselves
Re:this is great (Score:2)
Merry Christmas [opencores.org]