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

Re:Uh...not for me!

[dfn_deux]

Are the Open Source requirements met by those similar hardware alternatives, I wonder? I mean, there must be a reason they would design their own and not use alternatives - they're not stupid people, after all. Is that based on some knowledge of yours or is that a hollow appeal to authority? ugh that really does sound like a troll, doesn't it.. hmm well, anyone wanna mod me down, just remember what the guidelines are.

Re:Pretty crappy FPGA

[Anonymous Coward]

The plan is that this card will be used for development of the logic for a video card, which will then be realized in an ASIC in order to produce actual video cards.

On a crummy XC3S4000? What do they plan to develop, a Geforce2 competitor? LOL

Mods, do the gate count (4 milllion theoretical peak) to transistor count conversion in your head and compare against a modern video card's transister count, then look up how hard it is do floating point efficiently in a FPGA, and then mod parent down -1, plausible sounding total BS.

Re:PCI-X

[sp0rk173]

God, you're an idiot. It's not a consumer product to begin with, it's a development prototype. Just...Just keep your fingers on your mouse from now on, ok?

Son of a bitch.