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Graphics Software Hardware

Open Graphics Project Looking For Funding 266

Posted by CmdrTaco from the what-a-strange-project dept.
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.
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Open Graphics Project Looking For Funding More

Open Graphics Project Looking For Funding

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  • FREE (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @09:58AM (#12431285)
    They want to make a free graphics card? No wonder they need funding!

    • Re:FREE (Score:5, Funny)

      by caluml ( 551744 ) <slashdot@spamgoe ... minus herbivore> on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @11:19AM (#12432035) Homepage
      It's OK - what they lose in each sale, they can make up for by volume.

    • Time is hardly free! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Roadkills-R-Us ( 122219 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @11:39AM (#12432222) Homepage
      ...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.
      • It's all I've got.

        I'm a contract engineer, paid an hourly rate.

        That means that I sell my life, in 1-hour units.

        And these hours pay for house, car, furniture, tv, gas, electricity, toilet paper, dog, food, dog food, etc.

        Anybody who thinks time is free is an idiot.

    • Re:FREE (Score:4, Informative)

      by Jahf ( 21968 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @12:40PM (#12432866) Journal
      Open != Free

      Free != Open

      GPL == (Open && Free)

      Open Hardware == Open

      Open Hardware != Free

      In other words, a manufacturer could in theory create a card from an open hardware spec and charge for it. The idea being that said hardware would have specifications fully available. Further I would assume the hardware designer would require modifications to be made available.

      If you've dealt with various Linux binary-only drivers in the past few years you'd know what the coolness was.

      Hell, the coolness extends to Windows, too, as hackers could then modify windows drivers or create their own.

      Yeah, I know, you were lookin for the +4 Funny, but some folks are going to read it and take it seriously :P

  • Open Hardware doesnt work (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @09:59AM (#12431292)
    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.

    • Re:Open Hardware doesnt work (Score:5, Informative)

      by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @10:02AM (#12431329) Homepage Journal
      Works just fine:

      Based on their current work plan, an FPGA-based project board will be available in November "that serves as the development platform for a much less expensive ASIC-based solution (second quarter of 2006), contingent on available funding."

      I don't know if they've been paying any attention (I presume they have), but FPGAs have gotten extremely cheap [avnet.com] as of late. AVNet lists the Xilinx XC3S200-4VQ100C with the following rates:

      1 - $14.7950
      25 - $12.8700
      100+ - $11.2200

      While I don't like assuming, in this case it's fairly safe to say that the price would be even lower for quantities of 1000 or more. I see little difficulty with them being able to mass produce an FPGA card for ~$50 US. (Something of a sweet spot price point in computer the computer industry.) The only real reason I could see for going to ASICs is to reduce the cost of very large runs, and/or increasing the performance of the onboard chip.

      • Do you have any idea how complex a GPU is? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Theovon ( 109752 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @10:10AM (#12431400)
        You're quoting prices for very SMALL FPGAs. What makes you think we could fit something as complex as a GPU into a 3S200?
        • Do you have any idea how complex a GPU is?

          Actually, they're not to bad on complexity. Most of the chip complexity comes from constantly pushing the boundaries of performance. Even then, a majority of the tricky work is actually done in the software drivers.

          You're quoting prices for very SMALL FPGAs. What makes you think we could fit something as complex as a GPU into a 3S200?

          A 3S200 is not that small of a chip. Fairly good sized processors can be written on it, often with quite a bit of space left over. Even if they do need a larger chip (e.g. a Virtex III) they should still check the prices. Xilinx has been making sure that their chips are extremely affordable in large quantities.

          In quantites smaller than 1000? Well, it's difficult to get a good price out of ASICs as well.
          • Actually, they're not to bad on complexity. Most of the chip complexity comes from constantly pushing the boundaries of performance. Even then, a majority of the tricky work is actually done in the software drivers.

            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

            • 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).

      • Re:Open Hardware doesnt work (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        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 prototypin
      • I don't know if they've been paying any attention (I presume they have), but FPGAs have gotten extremely cheap as of late.

        You're right, and in fact if the production run is small enough and the design is not too complex FPGAs are actually quite a bit cheaper than custom ASICs or gate arrays (this is becase although the setup costs are huge for a custom ASIC, the production cost is relatively much smaller). In the case of an open graphics card however there are other factors:

        * The GPU is probably too com
        • * The GPU is probably too complex for the really cheap FPGAs to work.

          I've noticed a PDF they have on their site that has the specs. Apparently, they are using a Spartan 3 2000. The rest of their specs suggest a relatively simple GPU for the time being, so they should have no trouble fitting into the chip they chose. :-) (Although they will need a handful of other chips to support the features they want.)

          * most importantly...SPEED. Those ultracheap FPGAs are too slow to handle 3-D processing for megapixe
    • 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 [wikipedia.org] (actually, still do - except it's only boote

    • 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'm a bit skeptical about that. We run 0.25um stuff here all the time, 5 layer metal, and the mask cost numbers I've heard are in the $100k range for a dedicated production mask. Shuttle costs are well below that (depending if your fab of choice runs shuttles and you can get on them). I just checked MOSIS [mosis.org] a

    • If you think open hardware won't work (Score:5, Interesting)

      by WebCowboy ( 196209 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @01:03PM (#12433100)
      ...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...

  • I have trouble seeing... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cnelzie ( 451984 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @10:00AM (#12431303) Homepage
    ...how this whole thing will work out.

    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.

    • Re:I have trouble seeing... (Score:4, Informative)

      by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @10:08AM (#12431379) Homepage Journal
      Hardware is quite a bit different then software, being a physical tangible item that isn't easily copied/manufactured.

      Tell that to Pad2Pad [pad2pad.com]. I can send them a computer file, and they can send me back a complete board (or run of boards).

      In fact, hardware has become closer to software than you think. Thanks to languages such as VHDL [wikipedia.org] and Verilog [wikipedia.org], you can *code* a chip and test it without ever pressing a piece of hardware. And if you use an FPGA, you can litterally download the chip design into the processor and have a working model of your design.

      If you ever hear about "chip IP", they're referring to the practice of developing a chip design and then selling the design to hardware manufacturers. ARM is a particularly well known exmaple of this.
      • You need more than Verilog and a FPGA. You can't take a video card and make it an ethernet card by reprogramming a Xilinx chip, for example.
    • The real reason for open hardware (some would say) is for interoperability with open software. Full specs and probably an open-source driver will be released with the card, so that others can write/modify drivers that take full advantage of the card*. IIRC, this card will also use an FPGA, which might be available to the kernel, allowing drivers/users to "reprogram" the card's hardware layout as they wish.

      *currently, drivers for video cards tend to be binary-only or reverse-engineered and not fully impleme
    • This design may be more valuable as a core that could be added into all-in-one chips. I don't think it has a prayer of economically making it as an add-in video card. But there are lot's of Linux based embedded devices that could use this when integrated into the same chip as the CPU.

  • You're Skeptical! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by theGreater ( 596196 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @10:00AM (#12431310) Homepage

    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.

    People also contribute to FOSS out of a sense of duty, or of pride, or because of the perception of a superior product, or because all the cool kids are doing it, or to pad their resume, or to save money in the long run, or out of sheer necessity, or to scratch an itch, or because they are bored... et cetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

    -theGreater Counterexample.
    • Yes, but most of them don't involve parting with money. If you ignore the "time is money" thing, FOSS costs very little. Hardware development however, is not anywhere near as cheap. Unless they're able to shift lots of these things, you'll be paying more money, for less product. Maybe if you're one who sticks to his/her principles you'll consider that a good tradeoff. I doubt most people will though.
      • Open source does cost money. I have been trying for years to get a free computer that will just run a linux distro and not crash n' burn or require weeks of tech help. I finally just plucked down the $300 and picked it up from the UPS store this morning. Finally I can start hacking without it being interuppted every 10 minutes with hardware problems cuased by these POS Dell, HP, and other "name brand" computers.

        And why didn't I use my main computer? Can't it cost me my job becuase I was testing too muc

  • From what I understand... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by InterruptDescriptorT ( 531083 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @10:01AM (#12431311) Homepage
    Previous articles on this effort have made it clear that the graphics card was not going to have very many 'modern' features at all. Not, of course, that that's a bad thing--I mean, this effort is clearly targetted at hobbyists and other people who like to get 'close to the metal'. But it begs the question why any company would get behind an effort that is only meant to appeal to a very small subset of the consumer base? I'm saddened by the fact that they lost their company backing, but from a pure cost/benefit standpoint, it (sadly) makes sense.
    • Actually, the product is targeted at the mass market. This includes Linux desktops, heavy workstations, and embedded systems. Being open architecture, it can be supported on all other platforms as well. Certainly, this market isn't as large as, say, the Windows market, but lacking another product as OPEN as this one, open source users are likely to prefer this, because the device will be fully supported by open source drivers, and it won't be a stability concern.

      Also, a memory bandwidth of 6.4 GB/sec is
    • The article quotes ... "A 3D rendering engine, on the other hand, is a beast, and our performance will be less than stellar" Haven't some commercial video card companies already opensourced their 2D video drivers? XGI, VIA, and Matrox come to mind, all with average 2D performance and less than stellar 3D performance. Also ATi has released the specs for its older cards as well.

      The million dollars might be better spent getting ATi to open up one or two of their high-end 3D cards? Especially if KDE and Gnome
  • Many others would too. I don't think they'll have any trouble recouping their investment.

    • Re:I'll buy one (Score:2, Interesting)

      by isotropique ( 635117 )
      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.
  • 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?
    • maybe because there is no open standard with open source drivers? yes, for most people, this would meet the same goal. my guess is the people behind the project have the talent (or access to the talent) to design a card themselves, and feel, as many other people do, that the chance that the various commercial vendors to agree upon and implement such a standard is slim to none.
    • It's not different from open standards. If we had open standards, we wouldn't need this. The problem is that there is no open standard that the existing manufacturers are using.

      But really, it is less about standards. It's more about open. None of the existing manufacturers publish their hardware specs enough to allow open drivers. The alternatives are to reverse engineer it (very difficult), convence the manufacturere to publish specs (not likely) or make your own damn card (expensive).

      Actually, if some

      • You're damned right -- my most recent card purchase was a PCI Matrox G400. I paid more for it than for other cards that would have served my needs, but when I'd last purchased a card they were willing to provide Free software developers with access to hardware information.

        Sadly, they've since closed off access to the specs, even the same information that was available in 1999. They do provide drivers for their AGP cards, but my old Proliant 800 with its lack of AGP is left without a well-supported card. Th
  • I would like to volunteer to be a tester for this graphics card. An unfunded project done in a few engineer's spare time sounds like something that I want to be a part of! Go ahead and burn my house down... I'm insured! If I can finally get better driver support for my Red Hat installation, it will be worth it.

    But seriously, I don't see much need for this. Can someone explain it better than Timothy Miller? Although I was impressed with the fancy Gantt chart [gitk.com]

  • Naysayers rejoice (Score:4, Insightful)

    by billcopc ( 196330 ) <vrillco@yahoo.com> on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @10:06AM (#12431365) Homepage
    I'm going to say all the bad things I can think of so we don't have to waste time rereading them all day.

    1. The hardware will be underpowered because this group has little experience (if any) designing bleeding edge graphics hardware

    2. The card will be overpriced because this group doesn't have the manufacturing clout of NVidia or ATI

    3. The drivers will suck because nobody's going to buy this card and nobody will develop for it.

    4. The drivers will suck MORE because of all the trans-gamers out there who dual boot, they won't get the card because it won't be supported in Windows (or just very weakly).

    5. The company has no financial backing, so they will crash and burn early on and we will be stuck with abandoned hardware.

    6. This time, effort and money would be better spent harassing the existing graphics card manufacturers into opening up their drivers, as least the non-trade-secret parts so we can do our magic on it.

    7. (asbestos ON) I still don't think any Linux Distro in its current state should even be considered for desktop or gaming. But that's me being an elitist prick. Come up with a cleaner development model, make it "just work", and redo the whole windowing system into something that is NOT X, and maybe then we can start talking. The reason OSX works so well is because it does fifty backflips to almost completely hide the underlying Unix layer. It's not because I know Linux that I want to put up with its PMS all the time, sometimes it's nice to just click things with your brain switched off.
    • 2. The card will be overpriced because this group doesn't have the manufacturing clout of NVidia or ATI
      Consider that, as a piece of open hardware, NVidia, ATI, etc. are free to begin manufacturing it themselves, so long as they stick to whatever license it has. It might even make for a good base for them to add their own tweaks and customizations - marketing it as their own card.

    • Re:Naysayers rejoice (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Theovon ( 109752 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @10:31AM (#12431567)
      I'm going to say all the bad things I can think of so we don't have to waste time rereading them all day.

      Thank you for commenting.

      1. The hardware will be underpowered because this group has little experience (if any) designing bleeding edge graphics hardware

      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.

      2. The card will be overpriced because this group doesn't have the manufacturing clout of NVidia or ATI

      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.

      3. The drivers will suck because nobody's going to buy this card and nobody will develop for it.

      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.

      4. The drivers will suck MORE because of all the trans-gamers out there who dual boot, they won't get the card because it won't be supported in Windows (or just very weakly).

      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.

      5. The company has no financial backing, so they will crash and burn early on and we will be stuck with abandoned hardware.

      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?

      6. This time, effort and money would be better spent harassing the existing graphics card manufacturers into opening up their drivers, as least the non-trade-secret parts so we can do our magic on it.

      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.

      7. (asbestos ON) I still don't think any Linux Distro in its current state should even be considered for desktop or gaming. But that's me being an elitist prick. Come up with a cleaner development model, make it "just work", and redo the whole windowing system into something that is NOT X, and maybe then we can start talking. The reason OSX works so well is because it does fifty backflips to almost completely hide the underlying Unix layer. It's not because I know Linux that I want to put up with its PMS all the time, sometimes it's nice to just click things with your brain switched off.

      This is a WHOLE other topic, but in large part, I agree with you.

    • I am not involved with the project, but I would like to offer counterpoints.

      1. The hardware will be underpowered because this group has little experience (if any) designing bleeding edge graphics hardware

      It is designed to be underpowered. It is not going to support a billion triangles per second. It is designed to provide many basic features of the video card, and provide them well, in an opensource way.

      2. The card will be overpriced because this group doesn't have the manufacturing clout of NVidia or
      • We are currently lucky that nvidia keeps updating their drivers for the older video-cards, as the nv drivers (which are mostly reverse engineered / developed from tiny amounts of nvidia released specifications) suck badly.

        Putting 3D support aside for the moment, it's worth noting that NVidia produces one of the best VESA BIOSes on the market today. As such, their cards tend to be very easy to support and work far better than any competitor.

        The real issue is that most people want 3D support so they can pl
        • Right. However, my point was that Nvidia has not even released the specs for the 3d layer for a TNT2, correct me if I am wrong.

          What that means is that if you have a TNT2, and Nvidia drops binary drivers for it, you are looking at buying a new card if you need any 3d out of it.

          As the VESA issue is concerned, it is nice that they have a good VESA implementation, given that practically no one has completely implemented it ever. Unfortunately VESA is a standard that is a bit too old. It would be lovely if th
          • I just hope that they do not have crap in it like VESA has: scrolling framebuffers to implement double buffering and text scrolling is quite stupid nowdays IMO.

            Well... yes. VESA is a beast from another time altogether. The fact that it even works in x86 Protected Mode is a miracle to behold. But since it *does* work, it makes for an excellent method of out-of-the-box graphics support. Without it, the cute little QNX-on-a-floppy demo couldn't exist. :-)

            BTW, you seem to be very well versed in graphics iss
    • redo the whole windowing system into something that is NOT X,

      I think at this point for every user linux would gain by ditching X, they would lose an existing user. I might have agreed with you 2 or 3 years ago, when X was stagnating badly under the XFree86 team. Now that it is starting to make significant progress once again under X.org, it's become clear to many people that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with X that cannot be fixed.

      The biggest problem with replacing X is that everything in Linux
      • Hear, hear!

        The people complaining about X are those people who don't understand what they're talking about. The biggest things holding back X performance aren't their favorite pet peeves like network connectivity, usermode graphics, or code that older than they are, but rather the lack of good drivers and system configuration.
  • I think the fundraising efforts to support e.g. legal efforts by various sites and/or projects put paid to the theory that people only support such things because they are free, at any rate.

  • Open ARCHITECTURE (Score:5, Informative)

    by Theovon ( 109752 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @10:08AM (#12431378)
    Just to make it clear:

    (1) The OGP product is OPEN ARCHITECTURE. It's intended to be compatible with open source SOFTWARE.

    (2) There is a specific plan to make the "blueprints" to the hardware also available under GPL and LGPL at various points. ALL of the IP and schematics for the first product (the prototype board) will be open source.

    (3) Hardware always costs money.

    (4) This is a real product, being designed by experienced hardware engineers who have all the expertise necessary to do it. To the hardware designers it is not a "hobby".
    • mod parent up, this is NOT just about a graphics card, this is about open hardware.

      Thie is a highly visible open hardware project.

      If it is successful, more /WILL/ follow.

      The last one I came across was the penguin processor board that fitted into a memory slot, but it didn't have wide appeal (naturally).

      If you have an FPGA based PCI/AGP card, sure as hell you are going to use it for more than graphics.

      Folk will use them for SSL accelorators, crypto-disk accelerators, or anything that benefits from re-de

  • free != free (Score:4, Informative)

    by cecille ( 583022 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @10:09AM (#12431389)
    yeah, but, just like open source, you can still change for the boards and open up the source, or in this case, building specs, programming code etc.
    It would definately be interesting to have an fpga based board with the board programming code source available and the hardware specs available. That way, you could fiddle with your board and get it to do what you want, just like open source. It could be a viable business if they were charging for the boards themselves, but letting people play with the internal components a bit more than with proprietary. I can see lots of hardware geeks / hobbyists buying them just for the experience of playing.
  • If they can produce one of these things, and exhibit that they aren't all talk, then it would be interesting to see if they can continue to contribute open hardware DESIGNS.

    TO try and fabricate these devices, seems like a waste of money, when you could just licence the designs, and let individual hardware companies produce them.

    OR they could concentrate on producing hardware that can be updated through software, and let coders concentrate on producing better code for the hardware. Like Open cores.

    But th

  • Will their card be any better? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mi ( 197448 ) <slashdot-2017q4@virtual-estates.net> on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @10:11AM (#12431406) Homepage Journal
    Then the commercial cards with open-source drivers?

    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?

    • Exactly. That's like trying to build an open-source car. Yeah it'll work, but you don't benefit from billions of R&D investment like the other big names have. You have to go through the motions of trial and error and start from square one. In this day and age, I don't think I have the heart to go through that babysitting phase with another product.

      Why not try and identify what's holding back ATI/NVidia from releasing open-source drivers, and targetting those niggles to make our system palatable to

  • Know your market! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @10:11AM (#12431416)
    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!
    • The biggest problem with commercial video card manufacturers is their reluctance to (1) either provide full programming details, or (2) open source their drivers. By hiding details behind NDA agreements and/or restrictive licensing of their SDKs, they hope to conceal how they have "gamed" the benchmark suites, as well as to limit their competition. Problems arise when commecial vendors release a binary driver intended for a specific OS version, and are slow to adapt drivers in a fast moving software envir

    • Re:Know your market! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MartinG ( 52587 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @10:45AM (#12431700) Homepage Journal
      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

      I am a geek and an open source die hard.

      I absolutely do not have the lasest kickass card precicely because there is no open source support for those newer cards. Currently I have an ATI9200se which is the best card I could find that has fully functional open source xorg drivers that do 2d and 3d accelleration. It cost me about 25UKP. Hardly the latest kick ass card.

      I am willing to pay around 100UKP for a better card if is fully supported with open source drivers.

      I am not really interested in a reprogrammable fpga but I would support a company that provided it because I can see that others would be interested.

      For me, being fully supportive of open source _is_ the unique selling point.

      • I absolutely do not have the lasest kickass card precicely because there is no open source support for those newer cards. Currently I have an ATI9200se which is the best card I could find that has fully functional open source xorg drivers that do 2d and 3d accelleration. It cost me about 25UKP. Hardly the latest kick ass card.

        I am willing to pay around 100UKP for a better card if is fully supported with open source drivers.

        The "open source" card being discussed will not be even remotely comparable to t

      • I absolutely do not have the lasest kickass card precicely because there is no open source support for those newer cards.

        Absolutely. I too only have some old shit card (I don't even know what it is) that doesn't even run OpenGL. I wish it would. But I'm not buying Nvidia as when I installed the drivers on my work machine, I got random hard lockups.

        Just looked, and it is actually an NVidia in here. (0000:00:05.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV11 [GeForce2 MX/MX 400] (rev b2)).

    • Killer App for this: MPEG decompression in HW (Score:5, Interesting)

      by KMitchell ( 223623 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @11:00AM (#12431832)
      While I agree there's no way for this board to beat the big boys in 3-D, I'd suggest that building the "reference card for MythTV" should be an early goal.


      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...

      • Very much agree. If this card is not for gaming, then it should support a lot of other useful things.

        XVideo being one of them. Mpeg decoding is another. Motion Compensation / Deinterlacing would be cool too. Compositing so that X can be pretty would be nice.

        And perhaps, if the card is a reprogrammable card, then what would be cool is an ability to customize the card to the needs of the user. Say I would like compositing, but do not plan to run MPEG movies, so I will have one and not have another. However,
      • Ah, dammit. You beat me to the same thought [slashdot.org]. I think that this card could have a lot of potential if those 3 players (mythtv, pcHDTV, and the Open Graphics Card group) worked together.
    • 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,[...snip...]

      I am a geek, hacker, open source die hard and proud owner of a MX400.

      Geeks != gamers. AFAIC, as long as it run Neverwinter Nights ...

  • How to make this project work (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pieterh ( 196118 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @10:21AM (#12431488) Homepage
    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.
    • 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.

      F
      • 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.
  • I love the idealism. I'm very very behind it and plan to buy a few of these things when they are available whether I actually use them or not.

    But from reading their site, one of the first issues that popped into my head was "what hardware maker would want to put themselves through all of those requirements?!" Okay, so they save a lot of money on the R&D side of things but is it worth it to them? I guess we'll wait and see but from the outset, I see a lot of asian manufacturers picking up the plans o
  • Why doesn't IBM adopt the project? They have once produced graphics cards!
  • I guess you haven't seen the custom Motherbard idea [slashdot.org]!
  • Not that it isn't an interesting concept, but I hav troubles seeing the advantage of this project. OK, so you have a board for which the source is open, but which lacks many of the features of modern video cards. Alternately, you can have a more modern video card, but barring using the proprietary drivers perhaps you can't use the modern features.

    If this project took off I could see it becoming something impressive, but at the moment open-source-but-outdated isn't much better than a card with a card that

  • Donations? Pre-order? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NotoriousQ ( 457789 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @11:03AM (#12431866) Homepage
    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.
  • ...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 sou
  • I think it'd be interesting to hear if these guys worked with the guys from pcHDTV [pchdtv.com] to get their graphics card to work with HDTV and processing video. I think that if pcHDTV can be relatively successful creating linux-only cards, why not these guys? (and why not make sure their cards can handle MPEG2 or MPEG4 streams well - that might be a great untapped market for them).
  • Can something be setup so that contributions to Open Source initiatives are Tax deductible? Open source benefits society. These organization should be able to secure loot.

    I'd like more info on this if it's already in effect. Is a contribution to the Mozilla Foundation tax deductible?
  • You guys are on the verge of doing something extremely important. Although I have my doubts, I would like to congratulate you on being so brave, and on testing the limits of our economic system. If it works, it may do a huge difference in computers.
  • Still sounds like a neat project but they need someone with both a technical and a business mind to help a lot I think.

    As I understand it, the project is for hobbyists' fun (which is fine!) but does not make obvious economic sense (a problem with hardware projects it seems).

    I'd like to suggest they consider morphing the project to make it more interesting (depth) and applicable (breadth).

    For one thing I have noted in a past thread on this a number of things that would make me buy the card, maybe they sho
  • I want a few of those cards if they work well in linux to have a no brainer multiscreen solution.
    Right now, nvidia is good for gaming but installing and configuring thier drivers for anything other is a pita.
    So give me a good open solution for multidisplay and I will be ok to pay a little more for a little less power as long as I have the desktop performances that I need.
    Gimp in itself, thanks to its magic ui is begging for a multi display envirronment :)

    btw, I was also OK to buy a silent, electricity frie

  • A less grim future? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by __int64 ( 811345 )
    Amidst all the scoffing here, am I the only one who sees a semi-bright future for us though this and alike projects?

    I'm talking about DRM, TCPA, police-ware, Palladium - whatever it's called now - the only substantial threat to our freedom of computing movement. Not just the ability to install this week's trendy flavor of Linux on your Gateway, but the whole concept of using a computer as anything more than a glorified VCR is at steak here. The Internet is a powerful tool, for the rapid dissemination of un
  • Would it not perhaps be better, given the goals for the card, to first see whether one of the existing 3d companies (Matrox, perhaps?) would be willing, for the right price, to open the IP for an outdated product?
  • where do I preorder?

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