[Critiques, please?] The Linux Fund has just started a fund-raiser to raise money to buy 10 Open Graphics Development boards to give away to developers. Please check it out and donate at <a href="http://linuxfund.org/projects/ogd1/";>http://linuxfund.org/projects/ogd1/</a>. The Open Graphics Project home page is <a href="http://wiki.opengraphics.org/tiki-index.php";>here</a>. If you want to buy an OGD1 board for yourself, place a pre-order <a href="http://www.traversaltech.com/store.phtml";>their store</a>.
The Open Graphics Project (OGP) is not like other open source projects. Their focus is open source <b>hardware</b>. While it's relatively cheap to write software, compile it with GCC, and run it on a Linux box, hardware is expensive to make. Not surprisingly the OGP has progressed at a much slower rate than most software projects. The OGP started in late 2004. By the middle of 2005, they had a complete spec written for an open source graphics card. By 2007, they had completed the design for OGD1, their open source FPGA-based graphics card development platform. In 2008, they started taking pre-orders. After that, it was a matter of getting enough pre-orders that they could justify going to production. Meanwhile, the OGP has developed a fair amount of IP. FPGA logic blocks available under GPL include controllers for PCI, memory and, video, as well as a MIPS-like microcontroller called HQ. Putting those together, they have a partially working implementation of legacy VGA hardware and BIOS that allow OGD1 to boot in a PC as the console. That and a simple driver would allow you to drive two 2048x1536 digital monitors, albeit without hardware graphics acceleration (yet). The Linux Fund has recently come along to kick-start this to the next level. First, they found a PCB production house that should be able to build OGD1 boards in smaller quantities. Second, they decided to ask for donations in a quantity that, together with existing pre-orders, would bring the quantity up to the minimum number. Third, with the Linux Fund on their side, OGD1 is no longer seen as the only chance for the OGP to fund itself, allowing them to cut the price in half, making it much more competitive and affordable. -- 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)
