At the end of February 2006, the Open Graphics Project team released schematics for their development board, OGD1. An article on KernelTrap was written about this, explaining the release under GPL and the nature of PCB schematics (logical connections between chips) and artwork (physical component placement and circuit trace routing). Just last Friday, was announced the first draft of the artwork. For the most indepth information, check out the OGD1 page on the OGP Wiki, which links to PDFs for each of the routing layers and a composite image of all of the layers.
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Member since:2006-03-02
Yes, it is still possible to get cheap graphics cards, like the Radeon 7000, that are supported by OSS drivers. The problems are that the supply of those cards is dwindling, and they're not really totally supported by OSS drivers. They've never published quite enough information to FULLY support all of their features, and as you get into later generations like the Radeon 9000, the OSS driver acceleration code is okay, but doesn't support all of the best features. nVidia have never published docs on their chips. Matrox also don't publish everything.
Member since:2006-01-03
Please, read my previous post. I'm not talking about ancient Radeons; I'm talking about Intel integrated chipsets.
Intel IGP's are not only current, but they are by far the most popular 3D chipset in the market, present in many inexpensive motherboards and many inexpensive desktop and portable computers. Why, they are even present in all of Apple's mini Mac and Mac Book computers!
The performance of this chip is not good enough for games (though it seems great improvements are coming in coming models), but neither will be OGP's. However, it is more than enough for all the AIXGL or XGL effects you may want, it is very inexpensive, it is available now, and it's got good open drivers.
In short: you want 3D, you want open drivers, you want to convey your message to ATI and nVidia? Go buy Intel! I know it's unfashionable to defend the winning horse, but in this race it is doing the right thing.
Edited 2006-05-31 06:44
Member since:
2006-01-03
I'm not criticizing, though I would be free to if I saw it fit. I admire and envy their ability to do what they are doing: I wish I knew that much about graphics hardware and VLSI engineering.
However, I still think, and I'm free to express my opinion, that the project is made redundant by the fact that there are 3D graphics chips in the market available everywhere at very reasonable prices offering reasonable performance and with free drivers which already come included with the Linux kernel and x.org.
They want to develop a new family of 3D chips? Well, fine. But they are not going to solve the inexistent problem of inexistent chipsets with inexistent open source drivers. You wish ATI and nVidia would open up their drivers? I do too, but this initiative won't drive us any closer to that **in my opinion**
Edited 2006-05-30 23:02