A company named Tech Source has stepped up to create an open source 2D/3D graphics card. The project has an open mailing list and a spec proposal for the final card can be downloaded here. This project is a groundbreaking effort at creating truely open hardware, and is great chance for everyone who is interested in 2D/3D programming to see how a modern graphics card works.
Open source graphics card?
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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…look at the amount of available opensource cpus and other hardware:
http://www.opencores.org/browse.cgi/by_category
so, anyone who uses an oss cpu from a little, rebellious cpu vendor, please raise your hands (btw amd is not the little sympathic alternative, but a multibillion megacorporation)…
anyone? … see, thats the big impact another piece of oss graphics hardware is going to have.
Maybe most people here don’t realize what a FPGA based design gives : Of course the performance levels cannot reach a custom made ASIC but a reconfigurable FPGA permits to enhance the design by uploading a new configuration, after you’ve bought the card. Reconfigurable HW permits as well to adapt the design to the software. One can imagine a Matrox G400 compatible mode activated by downloading the proper configuration ( So that board would work with Windows … ). You could also expermient more easily alternate rendering techniques. For example, create a design geared only on 2D, saving FPGA area by removing 3D parts, which would do HW text rendering, for example. Others would prefer video codecs. One could imagine on-the-fly reconfiguration ( say, when you launch your video player )
A FPGA based graphics card could give amazing experiments possibilities.
For a $100, this card with a FPGA is a steal if you don’t see it as a graphics card. Check out the any FPGA prototype board,
they cost way over $100. The cheapest I found is the Spartan III prototype board for $99.
How cool is it that you can actually learn VHDL/Verilog and have a card to play with which happens to have a lot of rams and a DVI interface on it.
So, for $100, I will buy it even without any code on the FPGA. For $200, I would maybe expect some good Graphics code on it.
Head over to the forums at the OGRE website, it’s an open source 3D engine. Lots of fat 3D brains lurking, possibly with spare time and spare expertise. http://www.ogre3d.org/
True, that would be very interesting but the boards would probably cost an arm and a leg unless they manage to get sponsored by a generous firm. I don’t think we would see a decent board with a FPGA that is strong enough to do 3D rendering and with enough RAM for under 200$. And given that nVidia’s mid-end offerings are around that price… I love openness but I am pragmatic.
These cards are already considered “open” and works on several different platforms without x86 legacy bios initialization.
This is false. G-series cards rely on the legacy BIOS for their power-on configuration information. Without the information in the BIOS, it would be impossible to know what card you had, what type of memory it had, etc so you would not be able to soft-boot it. The BIOS is not all initialization/int10 code.
I know Matrox have EMBM, thats why nVidia and ATI pay for that license,
Nobody but Matrox has DirectX EMBM. ATI has a similar extension for OpenGL but it does not describe a mechanism that is congruent to Matrox’s.
They could purchase the PowerVR Kyro, and Tseng patents, and build from there.
What relevant patents did Tseng hold, and why would they have to buy them considering Tseng is long gone?
Could you, for instance, use the NV_* extensions or are those under a proprietary license?
The extensions themselves are not proprietary, but implementing them in any sane way might infringe on patents.
3. XvMC ?
motion compensation is pointless given the power of todays CPUs. What is really necessary is hardware colorspace conversion and overlay.
see, thats the big impact another piece of oss graphics hardware is going to have.
RTFA. It’s not an open source design. It’s an open spec design.
Can’t the guys from Xilinix just provide some vendor financing. Tweaking the payment terms is something that they could do without taking too much risk (getting a credit rating for TechSource shouldn’t be that difficult). How much do 1000 Spartans cost anyway?
Also, wouldn’t it be a great marketing opportunity for Xilinix, showing how powerfull their FPGAs are and that they can be used in mass consumer devices.
My two cents
Bernhard
Just because you an buy an nVidia TNT for $15 doesn’t mean you’re getting a better deal. If you actually read the specs, Techsource wants it to be 3D also. And no, it does not have to play the latest games fast to be a successful card. It would be a success if it worked decently with the OS and had decent graphics.
Very nice iniciative! Thank you Techsource for supporting Open Source community.
I’ll buy this card, freedom is very very important to me.
http://www.openhardware.net/
There’s something most of the people here is missing: opensource model of development has already showed us it’s potential of doing things great and better (like OSes, network service, standards compliance, etc.). So let’s give a try to this model in the hardware market. Of course the first (or second) implementation won’t be the best 3d video card of the world, but soon it could get there. Remember: Linux was nothing but an academic “toy” 12 years ago, but now it beats OSes that is playing around for more than 20 years…