Hi all, I will try to comment and add some more interesting topics and some random comments :)
> Now, we've decided that it's time we put aside the business approach, > and tie up any legal and intellectual property loose ends, so that we > can finally start to do what we do best, which is engineering. We > will produce a product that we can produce, the prototype. The > success or failure of this project will be dependent only on how much > the community wants it. I think comunnity wants it. First the FPGA board will be bought by universities to learn students about peripherials for PC and graphics stuff ;) Interresting "will buy it" feature could be "patent free" theora codec acceleration. http://www.theora.org More over theora codec is used in HDTV 2048x1536 cameras. The card will be bought by peple that want to see full stream from "theora based cameras" from elphel. http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT3888835064.html Little problem is that no PC can play it realtime now ;) Maybe even own theora encoder (the FPGA code from camera is available here) http://sourceforge.net/projects/elphel/ Would be good for streaming server solution based on theora codec. So companies would buy too... This is completly new idea maybe would be good to invite people from theora project to disscus (their IRC channel is #theora on same server) > > We will develop the board design and minimal IP (PCI controller, > etc.), build prototypes (for a few thousand dollars out of our own > pockets), and put the product on sale with a minimum delivery time of > four weeks, and we will build devices in minimum lot sizes to keep > production costs down. Revenue from the sale of this product will > then be used to attract investors and fund the next stage, production > of the ASIC. The NRE alone for the ASIC is about $1 million, which > means either we'll need that much in investment money, or we'll need a > partner who is willing to foot the bill and share in the revenues. > (That partner could be the open source community as a whole, in some > form or other.) Will people visit HW companies events and promote OGP there? I mean developers of OGP project are spread round the globe and they can try to contanct some companies in their own countries... > There will be two models of prototype board: (1) A 3S4000-based board > ready for the OGP core, and (2) a less expensive 3S1500-based > (synthesizable with the free Xilinx Webpack) board that is purely for > hobby and FPGA-lab projects, not suitable for OGP. Cool I will ask hardware group in our university if they buy some for students ;) > Obviously, the work schedule has slipped. Rather than an expensive > FPGA-based graphics board (in June), our first product will be an > FPGA-based project board (in November) that serves as the development > platform for a much less expensive ASIC-based solution (second quarter > of 2006), contingent on available funding. Thats good that in october will be somehing done. I have in plan to invite Timothy and maybe others to our conference in Prague called OpenWeekend. This years topic include openhardware stuff what a surprise :) So maybe I can just now ask if Timothy and maybe some other developers of OGP would be interrested to come in october to Prague? We are able to pay air tickets even from US and accomodation too. The conference is for undergraduate students and people who are interessed how things are working so it is not commertial project more info here: http://www.openweekend.cz/index.php?node=5d&lang=1 I can develop extra mail on this topic if needed. > I have included a URL for the work plan (below). It is preliminary, > conservative, and up for debate. I will later provide more > explanation as to what parts we are doing and what parts we hope will > be done by the community. Uaa all is just before my master degree exams in February :) > We apologize for not letting the community know sooner but, since > February, it has been a time of uncertainty. Things changed so much > and so often that we feared that sharing it would do nothing but > create fear and doubt that might jeopardize the whole project. I think the fear is still here because nobody replied yet :) > The remaining members of our team share a united vision and a common > goal. Hopefully, by November, this will result in the availabilty of > hardware that the community can help develop into a workable Linux > graphics solution. We can do its all up to you mmmkey :) I think we must not underestimate promotion of the project. Look how firefox is growing... Regards Rudolf _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
