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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.
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 Even going with 130 nm technology (which is already "outdated") can cost a million dollars just for the masks.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.
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.
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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.
...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.