On Wednesday 04 May 2005 16:24, Jack Carroll wrote: > On Wed, May 04, 2005 at 08:00:14AM -0400, Daniel Phillips wrote: > > I am not sure why you think it would be worth expending any effort > > on a 3S1500 version. That part is too small to implement our fixed > > function 3D pipeline. On the other hand, the 3S4000 is large > > enough not only to implement the fixed function pipeline, but to do > > some preliminary work on fragment shading. > > Here's one possible reason. > Some video card applications, such as desktop publishing, don't > require any acceleration whatsoever. The simplest possible logical > interface that will let the X driver write to a high-resolution > framebuffer is enough. The image sharpness and color accuracy of the > analog back end are the only things that market cares about. > So if the small-FPGA option were to give the project the opportunity > to get a board and its driver working sooner, and didn't dissipate > project resources into multiple efforts, it might be justifiable on > its own merits. Of course, I haven't seen the figures for the > economics of all this as yet, so I'm not going to actually argue for > that course of action.
Good point. How about this: when we do the next survey, we give people the voting for/pre-ordering the smaller part with just 2D acceleration and TV. Note that 2D acceleration isn't a completely simple project either, because we would want it to be compatible with the 3D card, fast, capable of decent bilinear filtering and blending, etc. But we would gain back the divider real estate and a few other bits and pieces, allowing the design to fit into the 1500. Just an idea. Regards, Daniel _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
