Open Source Graphics Card Available For Advance Orders

mollyhackit writes "The Open Graphics Project, which we've been following since it first started looking for experts four years ago, has just announced that the OGD1 is available for preorder now. The design features 2 DVI, 256MB RAM, PCI-X, and a Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGA along with a nonvolatile FPGA for programming on boot. FPGAs are reprogrammable hardware which means the graphics card can be optimized for specific tasks and execute them faster than a general purpose CPU. The card could be programmed for certain codecs to speed up encoding or decoding. An open hardware design means potential for better driver support. Of course you could always use the FPGA for something else... say crypto cracking."

Comments

PCI-X

[nuzak]

That's PCI-X, not PCI-E. The rest of the stats are also a retro-blast as well.

I'm not sure what kind of architectures you could really test with this thing. It has slower memory on it than is on my motherboard. I honestly believe you could write software renderers faster than this thing.

Re:PCI-X

[jmorris42]

> This is a prototype!

But this 'product' makes no sense to me. They admit it is more useful at this point as an FPGA dev kit. But $1500 is a lot to plunk down for an introduction to FPGA develeopment.

This product direct from xilink makes a lot more sense for someone getting started. Ok, it only has 128MB instead of 256M, a single VGA port instead of dual DVI and a smaller FPGA. On the upside though the cheaper board is PCIe instead of PCI-X which is getting hard to find a machine to stick it into. But it is in the same family and when ya actually have a design that won't fit in the smaller part is when you should think about buying a bigger one.

why not pci-e based?

[Joe The Dragon]

Pci and pci-x is dieing

Re:why not pci-e based?

[Uncle Focker]

Because it's a prototype card and not something meant to compete realistically with Nvidia and ATI.

The first short-term goal is to implement a prototype PCI graphics card dubbed OGD1 using a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chip. Although this card will not be able to compete with existing graphics cards on the market performance- or functionality-wise, it will be useful as a tool for prototyping the first application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) board, as well as for other professionals needing programmable graphics cards or FPGA-based prototyping boards. It is hoped that this prototype will attract enough interest to gain some profit and attract investors for the next card, since it is expected to cost around $2,000,000 to start the production of a specialized ASIC design. Later AGP and PCI Express variations will follow. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_graphics_project If I had the money to spend I'd help support them because I'd love to see them get the money to build a truly open video card that could compete with it's modern rivals.

Re:How about reprogramming it as a CPU?

[FranTaylor]

Not the point. The processor is not designed for that. You stuff microcode and data into it from the normal CPU and turn it loose, and it does its thing WAY faster than the normal CPU can. This thing has no disk IO and would not run well at all as a general purpose CPU. It's like trying to go grocery shopping with a Formula 1 car.

Re:So far, nobody has brought up the actual value

[Anonymous Coward]

How are you going to emulate video cards that are undocumented enough to not even have existing open source drivers?

Re:$1500 video card!

[x_MeRLiN_x]

I'm not sure which choice you think should be obvious, but do you really think this graphics card is aimed at the gaming market, and if so, what gave you that idea?

Re:you might be getting ripped off if...

[Salsaman]

Sure, it might be more expensive. But the point is, people who buy this are not just buying the hardware (yet). They are supporting the R&D these guys are doing, and enabling them to move closer to the production stage. It's an investment in future technology.

Frankly, I think this is great. Once they reach the stage of being able to compete with a low-end Nvidia/ATI on features and price, I would consider buying one. The cards could be optimised to work with whatever operating system you would be running on the machine, and would be guaranteed to have no driver compatibility issues.

I hope they are successful with this and can move into other areas. An open soundcard would also be very nice to have.

Re:Pretty crappy FPGA

[RattFink]

The SPARTAN 3 is a hobbyist FPGA. Cheap, and a lot of gates, but slow. A Virtex 4 would've been nicer :) The thing is already $1500, quadruple the cost of the most expensive part on the board. Yikes!

Re:Pretty crappy FPGA

[_merlin]

The SPARTAN 3 is a hobbyist FPGA. Cheap, and a lot of gates, but slow. A Virtex 4 would've been nicer :)

Kind of appropriate considering it's basically a graphics card designed by hobbyists, don't you think? I don't think a Virtex is the best choice, either: it uses a lot of power and has an onboard PowerPC core that wouldn't really be that useful. Any graphics card implemented on FPGAs will use a lot of power for relatively poor performance. To compete, you'll need enough orders to get your design fab'ed by TSMC or someone.

Cancel the project: this is a waste of time.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no way in hell these people can compete with ATI/NVIDIA. Have you ever been to NVIDIA? Do you have *any* idea how many really smart people they have working on these problems 60 hours a week?

This project would be so much better off reverse engineering Cuda to make an open source driver than trying to make their own graphics chip. Hell, even Intel is having a very hard time getting a high-end graphics chip to work, and they've got so many more resources than this project.

Open source software works because anyone can hack on it and produce comparable stuff with zero initial investment. Hardware does not work that way. There is just way too much of an initial investment required. Even with FPGAs it's too expensive, and you're way too far behind to start with.

These people are idiots to think they can succeed here unless one of them has a 90nm fab in his or her backyard. (Sorry -- this is qualitatively different than trying to write your own OS, which is done all the time in undergrad classes.)

Re:Pretty crappy FPGA

[John Miles]

Altera's parts are good, and their tools are nicer than Xilinx's in many respects, but there's a fairly-massive catch. Their "free" Windows tool chain requires product activation. Meaning you have no assurance that you'll be able to maintain your project for the next several years. Your design dies when Altera says it dies.

So, um, yeah... Xilinx.