Slashdot Mirror
Open Graphics Project Looking For Funding
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.
They want to make a free graphics card? No wonder they need funding!
The fabrication costs for one run of these cards can be huge. Even going with 130 nm technology (which is already "outdated") can cost a million dollars just for the masks.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.
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.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
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.Previous articles on this effort have made it clear that the graphics card was not going to have very many 'modern' features at all. Not, of course, that that's a bad thing--I mean, this effort is clearly targetted at hobbyists and other people who like to get 'close to the metal'. But it begs the question why any company would get behind an effort that is only meant to appeal to a very small subset of the consumer base? I'm saddened by the fact that they lost their company backing, but from a pure cost/benefit standpoint, it (sadly) makes sense.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
Many others would too. I don't think they'll have any trouble recouping their investment.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I don't understand how this is any different than having an open standard with open-source drivers? It seems to me this is roughly the same thing, but without the big companies, years of experience, corporate support, or breadth of input. Does someone want to enlighten me on the fundamental difference I'm missing?
I would like to volunteer to be a tester for this graphics card. An unfunded project done in a few engineer's spare time sounds like something that I want to be a part of! Go ahead and burn my house down... I'm insured! If I can finally get better driver support for my Red Hat installation, it will be worth it.
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
I'm a big tall mofo.
I'm going to say all the bad things I can think of so we don't have to waste time rereading them all day.
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.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I think the fundraising efforts to support e.g. legal efforts by various sites and/or projects put paid to the theory that people only support such things because they are free, at any rate.
If you're not living on the edge, you're just taking up space!
Nvidia open sourced their drivers? When did this happen, why wasn't I informed!
Just to make it clear:
(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".
yeah, but, just like open source, you can still change for the boards and open up the source, or in this case, building specs, programming code etc.
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.
...no two people are not on fire.
I think the idea here is that barebones 2d graphics controllers would be highly desired by barebones-system makers. So the tack is totally backwards from ATI and Nvidia, who lead from the high-end: an open good-enough option might make it in the low-end.
You're quoting prices for very SMALL FPGAs. What makes you think we could fit something as complex as a GPU into a 3S200?
If they can produce one of these things, and exhibit that they aren't all talk, then it would be interesting to see if they can continue to contribute open hardware DESIGNS.
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 this is just me thinking out loud....
shouldnt we wait until we have desktop fabricators.... and defabricators?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
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?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Rather than reverse engineering the drivers, why not encourage current video card companies to open source their drivers.
The market for this card is geeks, hackers and open source die hards.
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!
you can get it working pretty easily.
They show a level of commitment to users of opensource OSes such as Linux and *BSD.
That's pretty friendly in my books..
even if it fails as a gpu being its an fpga should allow us the ability to reprogram it to perform other functions so i say buy the pci version since its not like going to be any faster than a rage128 or the like then reprogram the core as a a encryption engine or as anything yould like
Merely open-sourcing the drivers isn't enough. XGI and VIA have done that. In order to make open source drivers truly valiable, hackers have to be able to FIX them when there are bugs. That's very difficulty when the vendor doesn't release full specs on their hardware.
The OGP is based around open specs.
nVidia aren't actively hostile to FOSS, but many people believe that it's unacceptable to use binary drivers.
They are not trying to compete with nvidia , They are trying to produce an open source graphics board.Everything , every last little bit will be open to us to tweak and examin .
,open graphics adaptor for 2d that is 100% supported in all operating systems ( givin enough time ).
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
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
The only way to fund this project is to find a company or group of companies who spend significantly more than $1m per year on commodity graphics technology, and who would be happy to switch to an open standard where they can share the costs and offload R&D work to a wider community.
I'd say, motherboard producers, who today pay royalties for on-board graphics cards.
Forget about asking the "community" to put up the money, it's not going to happen.
My blog
Why not "sell" this project for teaching hardware design at the local universities? Isn't that one of the goals of open source? Get the graphics giants to fund it and produce talented students from the course!
Open source video card? Is it possible?... Perhaps,... there can be a release of the pain from black thursday....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
comment regarding OS-SW.
well time=$ and this remark is hogcleanser
perhaps a good bit of the cost could be subordinated by piggybacking with a commercial LSI developer from a different market. They will have the fab accounts and maybe be willing to contribute room on prototype wafers. I'm not really familiar with this sort of work, so this may be totally off in wonderland, but how much space is left over on a wafer when these guys are running prototypes?
sorry for the long bold part, I closed it using a wrong tag. My fault...
I love the idealism. I'm very very behind it and plan to buy a few of these things when they are available whether I actually use them or not.
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 on these things and cranking out the cards quick and potentially flooding the market with these things. I hope they are damned good.
But another thing that makes me wonder is their solicitation for "3D experts." My first thought was these experts who might wish to participate are probably employed by some company that owns everything they think. So I can see a lot of potential problems with someone attempting to volunteer for this project only to find that some company wanting to claim rights to the project because it was done by their employee.
I suppose OSS projects are potentially vulnerable to that situation and I know it has been discussed all over the place. But I think this problem would be ever more present with hardware makers.
Here's another thing I'd like to find out about. I didn't see this information available (but I could have missed it) and I'd kind of like to know what hardware they are planning to support. PC only? Will it be friendly to laptops? What is their plan to get computer makers to adopt these things? In my mind, the only PC makers who will use these things will be the cheap no-name generic PC stuff associated with low-reliability and poor manufacturing standards. This doesn't aid in credibility at all.
I'd like nothing more than to be able to run a Linux laptop with OSS hardware inside. I think it'd be cool as hell and especially if the performance was as good as commercial and proprietary hardware out there.
In summary, I love the idea. Hope it goes far. Can't imagine how it will all work out though.
Being the un-hardwared knowledgable guy I am, maybe they could make it so I could pop in my old SD-RAM, and have a 256mg video card...
Why doesn't IBM adopt the project? They have once produced graphics cards!
I guess you haven't seen the custom Motherbard idea!
At least nVidia acknowledges our existence :-)
maybe they could team up with the 'bitboys' http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/bitboys/defaul t.asp. hopefully then they might actually release something.
One dollar? a million dollars? which is it?
Not that it isn't an interesting concept, but I hav troubles seeing the advantage of this project. OK, so you have a board for which the source is open, but which lacks many of the features of modern video cards. Alternately, you can have a more modern video card, but barring using the proprietary drivers perhaps you can't use the modern features.
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 has reverse-engineered drivers and is newer-but-driver-outdated.
I listended to Larry's speech the other day - nobody ever gets in touch with the guy for backing, or at least to bounce ideas off. Sounds like he's feeling left out, (not so) poor guy.
Maybe you should contact him, dropping a million on a project like this is a weeks interest on his investments. No big deal.
Give him a try, he's an engineer after all.
Call me naive, but wouldn't all this money not be best invested in an agreement with a manufacturer to release for say half of his line-up in the next five years, open-source drivers?
If no manufacturer joins in, why not put up a bounty for people to write these open source drivers?
As much as I adhere to open source software, hardware open source just sounds like communism in my mind; hardware needs money. And investors kinda like a yield on their cash.
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity
You do have some money. Send some to this.
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
blog.sam.liddicott.com
will appear when vendors start partially opening their hardware specifications/drivers just like evapoware. i.e. by claiming to be open they will try to weaken the Open Graphics Project.
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...
I remember reading an article on slashdot last year, about a software group who had developed software that used graphics cards to proccess other information other than graphics data. In particular i remember someone used a graphics card to do the proccessing for a neural network. Since the group talked about hardware limits involved in designing software for ordinary graphics cards, surely a opensource graphics card could have these features builtin and the two groups could work together?. Just wondering if anyone remebers the article and could post a link to the website, can't find it...it's been at least a year since the article was published.
Seeing how this is a very important effort, I would like to see this project/experiment succeed, even if what it produces is not quite what I / others need.
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.
badness 10000
"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."
Obviously not to get laid.
From Slashdot, news for nerds to OpenSource Ego Boost? An open source graphics card? Why? Not everything related to computers needs to be open source or have linux on it. I bet one of you is out there right now trying to think of a way to put linux on a power drill.
mod parent up, this is NOT just about a graphics card, this is about open hardware.
/WILL/ follow.
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-definable logic.
its a new world for open source folks when open source hardware is as well used as open source software.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
You're a bit behind the times. Modern ATC systems are always full-color.
...where a millionaire like Mark Shuttleworth could make a significant difference. Yet another debian clone is cute, but actually attacking the durn hardware problem is even better. You can't rely on ANY of the hardware manufacturers out there to make open source a number one goal, not with the borg still dominating the industry. For that matter he has the loot (and resources to find some more loot from VCs and whatnot) to release desktops servers laptops and pdas all built from the ground up with open source compatability and functionality. And get them on the shelves at the local retailer level all over. That would get some mainstream attention.
Open source will not crack the mainstream in any significant numbers until it's for sale and pre installed on machines at the local level, not mail order or just on the web. That means it's the hardware sellers who hold the keys, including graphics. You can code all de doo dah day long, and it won't matter much, until millions of PCs are shipped with some linux preinstalled,at a competitive price, it will remain niche and small numbers.
I hope these guys in the article can get funding someplace.
The actual internal specifications of the chip will be closed. At least partially.
Basicly they are producing a chip were you know that you put input into a you get output in b.
You know what the inputs are, you then know what the outputs should produce... This is all the OSS community wants, this is what this card will provide. Basicly like any other integrated curcuit you can buy in a catalog. Everything in terms of signalling, inputs, expected outputs, and logical design will be documented.
To understand what is going on you have to realise that it's goals is broken up so that it fits into different catagories.
1. The goal now is to produce a FPGA version of the chip and a board to go with it.
This will be very expensive in terms (several hundred dollars) of graphics cards, but it's not intended as a end-user product.
This is a device that is open and reprogrammable by hobbyists. You can turn it into something like a home-brew CPU if you want. Or a mpeg4 hardware encoder. This is intented for hardware geeks to hack on.
Their is no compatative product being produced for this nich.
Keep in mind that the company producing it and the individual releasing it ARE experianced video card developers. They develop for specialized enviroments such as Solaris machines or super high resolution black and white displays for medical displays.
2. The FPGA version will serve as the prototype for the ASIC fabing.
The ASIC will lower power needs, lower price per unit dramaticly, reduce cost of the curcuit board, and increase performance compared to the prototype.
This makes it:
2a. Suitable for embedded markets, which again have no comparitive alternative product for this nich.
It's open, royalty free, software to go with it is free. (a entire operating system is aviable at no cost).
2b. Suitable for desktop machines for Free Software operating systems. Which is the ultimate goal, but it not being relied on for financial success.
Cool, I haven't had my roots blowered for some time now. Is it still available ?
Wow, what an interesting thread! Although free-as-in-beer could end up being dear-as-in-expensive in this scenario, let's not forget what could be acheived.
Security (Data, Network, Integrity, insert your own personal security sphere) depends a huge part on trust: trust of the hardware for example.
It's really great that you have an ATI card that can chuck pixels at the screen so fast that your heads spins, but ask yourself how you know that the pixels your ATI card has rendered are the same as the pixels your PC asked the card to render? What goes on inside the card?
Pretty gnarly problem this: Security depends on a secure channel all the way from the user to the screen, storage, network, world.
Anything that can be done to open the hardware such that it's no longer just a black box on an architecture diagram has got to be good news: We know what's in it, we know what it does (If we care to look!) and what makes it tick. Such is the world advanced.
In general Open hardware projects might have a tough time in the real world, but that does not mean we shouldn't try. I guess most /. readers are aware of the Open Cores Project? This is kind of a halfway house to a full Open hardware project and it's thriving!
The world is our oyster here. Suggestions? My best one is the OHVM (Open Hardware Voting Machine).
Friends, Roman, Countrymen, lend me your ears. Whether it is nobler to spell, or make a custom motherboard, I cannot say.
Parent is clearly SPAMMING, and from the quality, I'd wager doing it via software.
Account should be suspended or banned.
I will still buy one. Thanks for continuing to exist.
A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
Not having worked on any Open Source projects myself, do companies allow NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreements) to open source projects (more specifically the official development team working at the lower levels of the code rather than a small contributor)? Would there be any advantage to open source developers to sign NDAs for hardware specifications but still generate open source code?
Jim
...people contribute to Open Source because it typically costs little more than time.
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.
Dear nVidia, here is my little idea for getting nVidia Graphics working on Linux: Release drivers in obfuscated C source! I mean, you can write program to merge all .c and .h files to one huge file, rename all vars and functions to _a00001 (002...) and reorder them (functions and vars) in random way with each new release. In that case, user will get less info from driver sources then what you get from disassembled binary code. Still, such driver can be integrated in kernel, all platforms working, kernel can report crash in specific line of driver code (which can be translated to real source code at nVidia). All good stuff. Now, I hope someone at nVidia read this.
839*929
I think it'd be interesting to hear if these guys worked with the guys from pcHDTV to get their graphics card to work with HDTV and processing video. I think that if pcHDTV can be relatively successful creating linux-only cards, why not these guys? (and why not make sure their cards can handle MPEG2 or MPEG4 streams well - that might be a great untapped market for them).
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
My kingdom for a mod point !
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
Actually, a more valid issue might be the lack of 3D transformations on those displays.
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 need 32MB), and fast RAM access from the CPU. Toss in BitBLT filling capability for good measure.
What makes a GPU powerful is all the 3D capability. If you can drop the 3D requirements the technology is conceptually far simpler...
Can something be setup so that contributions to Open Source initiatives are Tax deductible? Open source benefits society. These organization should be able to secure loot.
I'd like more info on this if it's already in effect. Is a contribution to the Mozilla Foundation tax deductible?
Is this serious?
You guys are on the verge of doing something extremely important. Although I have my doubts, I would like to congratulate you on being so brave, and on testing the limits of our economic system. If it works, it may do a huge difference in computers.
I don't know if they've been paying any attention (I presume they have), but FPGAs have gotten extremely cheap as of late.
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 complex for the really cheap FPGAs to work.
* PC Graphics chipsets and cards are not niche products and they probalby want to be prepared for high volume production. If that is the case, the per-unit cost of setting up for ASIC production shrinks
* most importantly...SPEED. Those ultracheap FPGAs are too slow to handle 3-D processing for megapixel graphics at 100FPS, which is what you need to do to compete with ATI and NVidia. The FPGA evaluation board they are releasing will probably run at some fraction of the intended frequency of the final product.
So what's next? Performance? Are there algorithms that can easily boost many folds on the performance of handling polygons/texture, without increasing hardware requirement/complexity?
I did not know that was doable. In fact I'm now intrigued enough to want to learn more? Which language do you recommend for a beginner? VHDL or Verilog?
Thanks
Still sounds like a neat project but they need someone with both a technical and a business mind to help a lot I think.
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 should look at old threads again. Personally I am not a target of this project, yet, since I would want one of the new high-end cards for my work. But cost is a factor and I would buy one also if it provided additional support for multiple projectors, outputs, video switching matrices, synchronization with cameras or other sources, and other things. In fact I'd be most interested if it worked ALONG WITH a well known high end graphics card, to provide additional functions not already on the one I have. How many people are actually going to buy only this open video card and NOT buy a full-fledged one too?
I also would buy a card if it was multipurpose, not just for video. For example if it provided special audio functionality (possibly provided by software not even on the card) I could imagine recommending it for art projects.
Personally I would definitely buy a card that allowed me to run perl at C++ speed. Maybe this is something to laugh about but there must be a lot of people who wish there was an open source system (fpga + software) to accelerate whatever they do. Some people might seriously welcome it if you could port the latest perl regex engine onto an fpga. Or how about running the perl 6 emulator on it?
Perhaps it would be interesting if a version was sold that included common pattern matching algorithms (like BLAST for genomics, or maybe geometry or facial extraction from video feeds?). Is there nothing that could be added to help the home PVR market?
And what about adding some real cutting edge science stuff to the card? Is there a good reason why this kind of a project must seek as its goal to achieve the worst example in the field? (Yes I know "but it's free".) For example how about something that models neurons? Maybe it could be done much more easily with just a little more hardware support in addition to the fpga. And there was a recent thread about the cell chip, sure you probably won't get to use it (though it sure would be nice!) but there was also a mention about the COSA Operating System and
synchronous reactive programming in general. These seem like very cool things! It doesn't sound so crazy to imagine being able to get funding (maybe even DARPA, who knows) if a well known university got behind COSA et al and the hardware project. And universities themselves might be very interested in investing financial and other resources in developing a continually growing hardware platform. Some schools even have fabs you know!
Well I am definitely not a hardware engineer but it does not seem too crazy to imagine some very nifty things coming out of developing such a platform (specifically a COSA-style platform in an FPGA card). Why not ask the COSA guy what he would need? You might want to consider that some cool things the Cell processor of Sony's is supposed to be able to do might also be achievable with a radically designed free hardware/free software platform, including media processing, and also in new kinds of programming.
Is it crazy to imagine a card that you would buy as the base and then purchase additional functional modules you could snap in? Could it be the size of a motherboard instead? (Note how luckily my lack of knowledge allows me to be silly or hopefully provocative.)
If you are involved with enough research projects, each one could provide a portion of the amount needed to produc
I want a few of those cards if they work well in linux to have a no brainer multiscreen solution. :)
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 friendly, transmeta based PC for the same reasons. Still waiting.
I just bought one of those fancy silent power supply for 70 euros, as I said, I'm OK to pay a little more if i get what i need. And a 200 euros fanless 6600gt nvidia. Just to show that I put my cash where my mouth is.
Comfort, silence, multi display, linux, freedom and openness, and a no electricity hungry system.
Amidst all the scoffing here, am I the only one who sees a semi-bright future for us though this and alike projects?
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 unflattering information, organization, collaboration, it breads free-speech and revolutionary ideas - and does many other things scary to those in power. And the easiest way to kill it? Pull the plug on consumer hardware. Lock it down, restrict it. Subject all files to corporate/government run blacklists. Force viewing of advertisements and propaganda. And whether this is implemented by a bipartisan corporate consortium or stone cast in law, that's largely irrelevant. As long as it's implemented slowly (so people don't notice), and it's ubiquitous - there are no alternatives, it will largely put any social gains we've made in the last 20 years (especially the last 10) on ice.
And my friends, assuming this dark prediction unfolds, Open Hardware would go underground (along with freedom), and that might be our only means of real communication.
...then you just don't "get it" at all--not what is possible in hardware engineering today, nor the philospohy behind Free (libre) and open systems.
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...
Why not. I've heard it said many times that the cost of hardware manufacture is mainly in the development.
Well if that's being done for nothing then surly major unit shifters would be interested?
Of course Windows drivers would need to be written as well or it would undoubtdly sink like a lead balloon.
Would it not perhaps be better, given the goals for the card, to first see whether one of the existing 3d companies (Matrox, perhaps?) would be willing, for the right price, to open the IP for an outdated product?
The market for this is hardware manufacturers that want well-supported cards in the Linux systems that they sell. The Linux market might not be very large, but there are significant installations all over the United States at places like oil companies that have traditionally used Unix workstations.
here's a little history http://www.firingsquad.com/features/atihistory/ "The entire life savings for all three men totaled $300,000. According to Ho, starting a computer company required big capital - they could only afford to be a graphics company."
Some people believe 1-1=3 and for the sake of being politically correct, we should respect their differences
where do I preorder?
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
NVidia drivers are crashing trash, and it's the best we have... NOT FRIENDLY at all.
I try to think of purchasing things in terms of how much time they cost, instead of how much money. Meaning that a raise has the pleasant effect of making everything cheaper. So a stack of comics doesn't cost forty bucks, it costs a few (post-tax) hours of my time. A nontrivial car repair might cost a week's pay. And so forth.
I suppose most folks can get along thinking in terms of abstract dollars, but turning it into time makes it much more concrete for me.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
will the card be forced to support Macrovision in order to legally play back DVD content on the TVout card???
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Maybe. If you read the mail list archives, it seems unlikely they will release their verilog code.
There is much talk about accepting community code under LGPL and merging it with unreleased proprietary code... that may someday be released if the community makes a large monetary investment.
Don't believe me? Read their mail list archives. This strategy shines through over and over again. Their "open" focus is a fully documented register set, not fully GPL released "hackable" design. There's even a mimi flamefest between on the project leads and someone who really wants to see more focus on making the hackage FPGA prototypes more of a goal for the project.
Then we could all be able to get a lovely cheap open piece of hardware
Perhaps, but the "cheap" part is a long way off in ASIC land. And recently, VIA and XGI have made very cheap chips with some openness. So there's already strong competition for the cheap chip market.
that by its very being will be fully supported in the OSS world.
This might happen... maybe?
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
An open source piece of hardware? What next, open source fabrication plants?
Sure, we'll all pony up a few billion dollars, so we can use a buggy 0.7 release for 5 years.
Hey, I know, what about free/open source homes?
Or a free / open source subway system?
I wonder what RMS and ESR think? Actually, I dont care!
Developer: Tweak, tweak. Okay, now lets see how many triangles per second I get.
Monitor: Kablooey!!!
Developer: (visual: planet Earth) DAMN YOU, OPEN GRAPHICS PROJECT!!!!
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
Don't believe me? Read their mail list archives. This strategy shines through over and over again. Their "open" focus is a fully documented register set, not fully GPL released "hackable" design. There's even a mimi flamefest between on the project leads and someone who really wants to see more focus on making the hackage FPGA prototypes more of a goal for the project.
I'm not sure how this is less than what any other graphics vendor is offering.
Does anyone know if they accept donations? And if yes, where?
It's not.
But it IS considerably less than what most casual observers have misunderstood the project to be. The parent post raved about how "every last little bit will be open to us to tweak and examine".
By reassuring yourself "we're still more open than any other vendor", you don't see grossly inaccurate expectations many readers have of your project.
I happen to be one of those few hardware hackers, not really your target market, who could and would buy the FPGA-based board for the sake of fiddling. Yeah, I know it's going to be several hundred. But so was Xilinx's BaseX (linux version), and I might end up buying the full one for larger device support.
But saddly, looks like the source won't be available. Kinda negates any reason to buy the FPGA version. If you do publish the source, I'll probably buy one to fiddle with.
But it is true, there are very few hardware hackers who can do FPGA work. If I were in your shoes, I'd probably keep the source proprietary to maximize chances of commercial investment. But I would try to clear up misunderstanding about the true scope and character of the project and what specifically "open" means in terms of this card.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
;) yet again it was one of my famous typOs , I cant remember what i ment to type exactly now but i was mroe refering to open as in the same way of the ppc hardware as an open specification so drivers could be more easilly made ... ;) i am if anything entertaining
sorry for the confusion but it allows for some nice conversations anyway
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
...then why not buld a cheap CPU-and-glue-logic FPGA and give the world the USD$100 laptop by the end of this year?
Or if you could build a TCP stack and an X server directly into the hardware, you could fit the entire thing (plus ethernet plus 2x or 4x USB) inside the back of a standard 17" LCD screen and probably even power it from the screen's PSU without it noticing and it would still absolutely rock as a thin client.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...a TCP stack, 1280x1024x24 2D graphics display and X11 decoder with one of those, a stick of RAM and some interface chips?
I'm thinking of a little (few matchboxes) black box which you plug into a flatscreen's video connector and either run the power cable through or power over ethernet. With the addition of two or more USB sockets, you have an instant thin client.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
AFAICT, their cards have always sucked, from the zillion-different-versions Virges (which were often slower with hardware acceleration even under MS-Windows) through the lacklustre Savage to whatever they're calling it today.
I think OGP is worth supporting not so much for their first card as for showing other manufacturers that there is no secret sauce.
Really!
Each knows pretty much what the others are doing (phut went the "but they'll reverse-engineer us and drive us out of business argument), and any advantages one may hold over the others are temporary. That makes the competition expensive for both players and customers because they're competing on qualities not related to the utility of the product, qualities like advertising abilities and distributor channel reach.
With fully opened architectures they could compete on utility and price instead of greater amounts of meritless advertising or exciting-sounding but practically useless secret sauces.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
If that's a given, if they can see the value in the OGP to themselves, then it doesn't matter what someone who controls essentially $0 thinks about your project. As long as there is business value and mandated openness in the card, then the card will fly and the "freedom value" will quite happily ride for nix.
So essentially OGP's object is to interest enough of said hard-nosed businessmen to get to the first megabuck? Then you'll give the whingers what they say they want, because you wanted it available and not because of all the whining?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The rules for building one or a handful of cars are completely different (at least in Oz) to the rules for building ten thousand at a run. An Open design which could be built by individuals would be significantly different from the same design aimed at factories.
Because this card is open, it would be temptingly easy to program the FPGA to solve non-display problems. Having the video hardware hanging off it would be merely convenient. In that context, being able to shove half a dozen stripped-down PCI versions of the card into a cheap motherboard might be exactly what a particular application demands.
Or perhaps a handful of PCI cards with four video outputs apiece might be handy for running a whole security room full of monitors from one box. I can imagine ATI or NVidia getting a bit... sticky, shall we say, about someone sawing up one of their own cards to the same end.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The 9200SE's graphics performance is hardly something to write home about. I'm looking at the output of one now.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
They have businesses already sponsoring some of their driver developers. Not geeks, hackers or "open source die-hards" (hi, Richard!).
And yes, they are doing the whole lot on FPGA. RTFA.
Silly coward, kicks are for twits!
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Else when I got mod points tomorrow (at the current rate of one set every two days), you'd have a +1, Informative sitting in your lap.
The device itself is interesting. Triple display support is my ideal. One honking big screen landscaped in front of you with the main workpiece on it, and two smaller portraited panels either side for toolboxes and ancilliary stuff (like Googling for details, samples etc). You get something as useful as the whopping great big Apple panoramic displays, but with better DPI and for about 1/3 of the price.
Is anyone selling a board or kit fo rthe suckers?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
They seem to be fond of CPUs. (-:
Impressive to see [done] next to so many items. Complete systems on a chip, boards to host same, FFR, JTAG, AC97-on-a-chip, lots of stuff.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Perhaps it would be interesting if a version was sold that included common pattern matching algorithms (like BLAST for genomics, or maybe geometry or facial extraction from video feeds?).
The card is hackable and will come with full specs and documentation to help you hack it. Go ahead and code your own pattern matcher in Verilog or VHDL!
Is there nothing that could be added to help the home PVR market?
There are a bunch of features already in the design to support PVR/video playback applications, particularly two-way hardware YUV conversion and TV out.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
In a project lifestyle, often times the testbench (the hardware simulation stimulus/checker) becomes much more complicated than the actual RTL code (Verilog, VHDL, System C) that describes the logic circuit. Writing this code actually can be much more trivial.
The testbench has much more cases- and can be more difficult. Each manufacturer could write code that passes the testbench- and then manufacture it- and the drivers should be compatible with all HW.
The question then becomes- how to do the testbench. Do you use a language like VHDL, Verilog/Perl, C, Vera, or E? The answer to that question may dictate what tools would be required to generate the HW.
I think we are still aways from any of this.
If you read the mail list archives, it seems unlikely they will release their verilog code.
The situation has changed now that Tech Source is out of the picture.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
I try to think of purchasing things in terms of how much time they cost, instead of how much money.
Guess "how much time they cost" explains your fetish for big houses.
I hope you have the luck to grow old enough that you come to appreciate that others' time is also more valuable than their money.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
I don't own a house, though I'm currently seeking an apartment.
Who is this "you" that you're replying to?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
ATI does. No other big player does at the moment. ATI also only provides docs for older chips, nothing they are currently selling. It would be thrilling if more manufacturers would provide a NDA policy (at least one that allows open source code), but it seems not to happen in the current climate.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
XGI has not open sourced any 3D driver. VIA has not open sourced their MPEG acceleration.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
Thanks for the reply, that's interesting and will take another look at it.
Matt
One can be seduced into thinking along those lines - that OS X succeeds despite its UNIX innards - but it's symptomatic of a faulty view perhaps conditioned by your antagonism to Linux. First, OS X is not Linux. Second, yes, Apple took the route you wisely (with hindsight) counsel, of abandoning X11. And after doing that, they were left with an elegant GUI-less system (Darwin) to build upon. And they did: by designing a new "legacy-free" windowing system. The result is as far as possible from the "layered cruft" that you imply must be lurking somewhere in OS X!
But enough facts. There's a more subtle problem with your remark, and that is you're missing the point that a UNIX system does not really present any user interface except those which are specifically part of its role. To users, it's completely transparent. (I admit this is a little tricky to grasp at first, but the idea falls naturally from the original conception of UNIX - or any operating system - as a mediator between user and machine, but as transparent as possible; a.k.a. the computing utility, but these days most commonly describing a one-user box.)
If its role is windowing, then you get windows. If its role is shell server, then you get shell (pick one). If its role is a file or database server, that is what you get. Therefore, there is no inherent awkwardness in its interface, and no need to "hide" anything, since it's already hidden. The ideal operating system is already invisible. What is really happening is that the computing resource is being exposed to the user.
Let me give the example of a UNIX web server: To users of the web server, exactly the right interface is presented, neither too much nor too little. (The other requirement is availability, and UNIX delivers that, of course.) Do you see?
You're probably confusing "access" to the computer with "administering" the computer. System administration is one area to which Apple has (necessarily) given considerable thought and design. Most OS X administrators would not need to use the command line; but power users can get considerable extra leverage from it, should they need it.
Then you are left with the ability for ordinary users to be able to complete their tasks on the machine. By definition that is nothing to do with any operating system. That's the role of application software, and its shortcomings don't belong here. Suffice to say, Apple has always famously delivered a great user experience in applications, as well; not just its own, but (like the competition) Apple invests a great deal in educating developers and producing supportive development environments and resources.
To sum up: If you can find the "50 backflips" or the SuperCruftCurtain that "hides" UNIX so that OS X users can get by without enduring its "PMS", please let us know where it is. I do agree that Linux could do with some of the same polish that OS X has enjoyed, but in the meantime, let's not get confused about what UNIX is and does.
Perhaps the UNIX philosophy is too simple and Zen-like to be approached without suspicion by those abused and conditioned by years of Microcrud.
you had me at #!