On Sun, 2006-05-14 at 11:49 +0100, Dieter wrote: > In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Ray Heasman writes: > > > > the stated primary intended uses of > > > this design are "2D desktops plus the simple 3D eye candy that is > > > popular in recent UIs." > > How much does adding useless eye candy hurt things? Transistor count? > (read: cost/power/heat) Design time?
I'm not sure how much a shader adds, but if we want to get something out there soon, and for cheap, that means a limited number of gates and little or no mixed signal component. That might not be possible at all in the desktop arena (people will want their analog outputs). In the embedded arena, it might not be that bad to have just digital outputs, and it could be done for an order of magnitude less money than something that is too big to fit in a cell ASIC and that requires mixed signal processing in the device. > > There will always be a proprietary chipset with open source > > drivers that beats what an OGP design could do. This proprietary chipset > > will always be cheaper, because of volume. > > What do you recommend? ATI doesn't support sync-on-green. Nvidea > drivers don't work. Other brands? Almost never hear about anything > except ATI/Nvidia. Need open-source (not binary-only) drivers for at > *least* the BSDs and Linux. Hardware decode of mpeg2ts, hardware scaling, > High quality s-video out. DVI (preferably dual-link) or HMDI for the future. > The possibility of calibrated color if I decide I need it. No fan. > The ability to see what the stupid firmware wanting 640x480 is printing, > using a fixed-freq or limited-multisync monitor. (scan converter? > letter/pillerbox?) > > > They are a lot less likely to pay more or accept a design if it is > > inferior to just about anything out there > > Intel and Microsoft being the obvious counterexamples. Well, if OGP had the sort of lock that Intel and Microsoft have on their industries, along with attendant network effects, I think you would have an argument. As it is, I don't think your examples are relevant at all. > > Unless you can find > > something to do that is "cool" with the FPGA based cards, you are going > > to be seriously in the hole for making them and people won't do much > > with them. > > Given that FPGA is expensive and power hungry the app had better be very > useful or the number sold will be very small. If the number sold is small, > the profit per card needs to go up to pay for development/fab and to fund > the ASIC. This was discussed a few weeks ago. Seems like a long shot to > me, but I don't have insight into this market. This part isn't talking about market. It's talking about generating the kind of excitement and immediate usefulness that means people want to play with it and will hack your code for you. It sounds like Timothy isn't depending on that - I think he's just hoping to take advantage of other open source companies rather than general excitement and development work in random open source developers. Cheers, Ray _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
