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Open Source Graphics Card Available For Advance Orders

Posted by timothy on from the one-blast-from-both-the-past-and-future dept.

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."

3 of 262 comments (clear)

  1. Re:why not pci-e based? by Uncle+Focker · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.
  2. Re:$1500 video card! by x_MeRLiN_x · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

  3. Cancel the project: this is a waste of time. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.)