On 12/15/07, James Richard Tyrer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Are we really going to have that kind of hardware available?
I appreciate your enthusiasm. However, one thing you're leaving out of this is that the OGA architecture we have spec'd out is well understood both to implement and to use. Given our current level of funding, we don't have the manpower to design and implement a new architecture. And don't forget that a more flexible architecture requires significant software support to compile shader programs, etc. Regardless of whether or not a programmable architecture performs less well or requires more hardware, we would not be able to support it. The fixed pipeline has been around the block a few times and will be relatively simple to implement drivers for. Also, OGA1 has a very clear direction to go in, while designing a programmable GPU would involve months of debate. Even if programmable required _less_ hardware than fixed (which I believe is not true), I would choose fixed for the above reasons. [If some of you guys develop a programmable engine and all the surrounding software before we get around to OGA1, we'll use your design.] In any case, who knows what's going to happen. Speculating about GPU pipelines is a distraction at the moment, because we really need to get OGD1 and its baseline code finished. And are we sure that a graphics chip is the best thing to do after OGD1? Maybe we should do something with shorter time to market. This stuff costs money to make, and we need a diverse product base to keep the revenue up. Endless debate does not a successful project make. To quote Linus Torvalds who was quoting Voltaire, perfect is the enemy of good. Pick something that will work and do it. Everyone's going to want that one extra "little" feature, but to add them all would be intractable. Instead, we need to hit that 80% mark where everyone agrees that the absolutely most critical features are in there and that a usable and reasonably performing system could be made out of it. (This is a multicriterial optimization problem, but the optimizer has to be quick about it.) I don't want to squelch your creativity. I'm a Ph.D. student studying AI and cognitive science. Loads to debate about in those areas, and I really get into it. But being too exploratory won't work for us here. -- Timothy Normand Miller http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~millerti Open Graphics Project _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
