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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.
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?
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?
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.
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!
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.
The promise of a well designed graphic card which is thightly integrated into the kernel is the reason why I am ready to put money on this project. A lot of people are paying high price to get a few more FPS on their favorite games. I feel paying a high price for an openly designed product is more important.
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.
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 (actually, still do - except it's only booted up on special occasions). In the dying days of that platform, various enthusiasts took it upon themselves to design their own ultra-fast Atari clones, using a mix of off-the-shelf components and custom designs on FPGAs.
Something tells me that if it's possible for someone to design a whole new machine without millions of dollars to spare, it'll also be possible to design a basic graphics card for running on an FPGA.
But then, why not use some off-the-shelf graphics chip as the heart of the system, and use any profit on the sales of that to help fund the development of a newer design? Or am I just being silly?
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Why doesn't IBM adopt the project? They have once produced graphics cards!
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 GPUs. Xilinx states that it contains 200,000 system gates. If you have ever worked with FPGAs, you'll know that typically only a max of 75% of the resources can be used if you would like to be able to route your FPGA and still maintain decent clock speeds. This leaves around 150,000 gates. 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).
GPUs can NOT be programmed onto FPGAs. At least, not in an economically feasible fashion.
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...
In a rather funny coincidence, I and another student happened to program a GPU onto the exact FPGA you're talking about for a graduate seminar at UNC.
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 prototyping little designs or small modules but they're useless even as a full prototype chip and certainly aren't production chips by any means.
(P.S. Graphics chips are the second most complicated beast in your computer, after the processor (and if you've got an older processor and a newer graphics chip, it's probably not even second).)
Definately.
They aren't just looking for funding from the 'regular guy' they are looking for funding to people that want to be partners.
The main reason that they would like to make it ASIC isn't just to reduce the end-user style consumer card's prices, but to make it acceptable to be used for embedded platforms.
There a HELL of a bigger market for embedded platforms. For every desktop there is a probably a dozen dozen embedded machines. And more and more will be wanting relativley advanced graphics.
It may have a low-spec setup for the desktop, but how about a Open-spec, low-power, chip that you can freely use in whatever device you want with no more royalties then the cost of the actual chip? Openly documented with plenty of code for you to work with?
It's prospect isn't as bad as people think.
Even if less then one percent of one percent of Desktop users pick up on this device, then it still can easily be profitable.
And their goal isn't even to realy be profitable. It's to basicly break even. And if that happens then they will be able to get more money to build cards and be able to build something that may actually end up being usefull for gaming.
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
And, what tricky work is done in software? Shading? Bump mapping?
:-)
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).
1. They're not trying to reach the same levels of performance as NVidia. (Yet, anyway.)
2. A single pipeline isn't so bad. It gets messy when we're talking multiple pipelines, texturing units, etc. I assume for now they're targetting a single pipeline chip with only one or two texturing units.
If you have ever worked with FPGAs, you'll know that typically only a max of 75% of the resources can be used if you would like to be able to route your FPGA and still maintain decent clock speeds
Generally, yes. But there's still ways to cheat like hell to up that utilization a bit.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
...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.
...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...
Forget about asking the "community" to put up the money, it's not going to happen.
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.
Free software has allowed me to accomplish things that would have cost me many thousands of dollars if I had to use proprietary software. More realistically, I couldn't have accomplished those things at all without Free software. This cost savings given to me through software Freedom translated to equal cost savings for my clients.
Free (again, not free) PC compatible hardware can do the same for hardware manufacturers, which can thereby translate to increasing cost savings for their customers (like me).
If this card is fast enough to play Quake 3, a claim which the project's site makes, then it is a good enough start for a wide swath of uses. My work projects, for example, are mutating into providing 3D visualizations for business data. One of my Free projects is also moving from 2D to 3D.
Q3A-capable frame rates, with good quality texture maps, are easily enough to satisfy this kind of work. It's also good enough to play 3D games.
I'd consider a $200 donation towards development of a Free 3D card well worth the investment.
I'd consider a $200 donation towards development of a Free 3D card well worth the investment.
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.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.