So Long Open Graphics [LWN.net]

So Long Open Graphics

Posted Jan 18, 2007 10:03 UTC (Thu) by gnb (subscriber, #5132) [Link]

On the other hand it spreads the risk. The OGP may deliver a viable open
video card (I would certainly like to see that happen) but they may fail
regardless of the Nouveau effort. Free, good quality, nvdia drivers might
work against them long term but I would guess they are well over a year
from the point where anyone will be making a choice between buying OG
product and nvidia, and there's no guarantee that they'll get there,
despite a lot of good work.

So Long Open Graphics

Posted Jan 19, 2007 2:21 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Well the thing that is nice about the OGP is that they are not depending on desktop users.. They've pretty much assumed that was going to be a non-starter from the get-go.

The first design, the FPGA, should appeal towards hobbiests, very custom hardware chips, and other such things. It's open and programmable with some logic that is freely aviable. People who would like to maybe try CPU designs, or make a very high speed encoder for HDTV compression. Something like that.

From that perspective it is a open programmable PCI card with a huge chip and a massive amount of onboard ram for relatively cheap. This should appeal to some people since it's the only one of it's type and it's logical that there would be some demand for it. It should be very usefull.

Then the second idea is that after the 3d logic has been worked out then you produce a ASIC chip that they would be able to sell it to embedded developers who need or at least would rather have a open design for themselves to use. A open 3d graphics chip that they can freely integrate with a custom embedded devices should be attractive.

Also it's worth keeping in mind that although there are things like Intel graphics and such they are NOT open hardware. The drivers are open, but they are developed behind closed doors. This is certainly better then what AMD or Nvidia does, but it's not ideal.

BTW, I don't know if it's been covered here but the first prototype of OGD1 is now a reality!

http://wiki.duskglow.com/tiki-index.php?page=OGD1&PHP...

They have pictures of it and everything...
256MB of Memory.
2 dual link DVI connectors (for dual high resolution displays)
Xilinx Sparten XC3s4000 FPGA for GPU.
The Lattice XP10 FPGA for PCI controller.
100 pin IDC bus expander
and all sorts of other fun stuff.