Hello all, The following suggestions may have already been discussed, I apologize in advance if this line of thought is redundant.
Being more of a technologist / inventor and project manager instead of an engineer I have had little to contribute from a direct firmware / software development standpoint so I've been standing back as an observer. Now that you are at the point of redefining the project I see an opportunity to share some thoughts. I'm involved in a start-up company that is developing an ultra high definition laser based video projector. During our product development we've come across several instances where there are protocols that are open, but there is no open hardware IP to support them. One example would be DisplayPort, especially version 1.2. A lot of pieces that go into a GPU are useful on their own -- display interfaces, memory controllers, bus interfaces, DMA drivers, etc.. I suggest that taking on smaller chunks of hardware that provide useful solutions to small innovators and other open hardware projects may provide a quicker path to "market" while avoiding directly competing with large corporations. This may also help provide resources for the larger project. Regards, Jeff Pease Magic Lantern, LLC ---------------------------------------- From: "Timothy Normand Miller" <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, May 28, 2012 9:53 AM To: "Nicolas Boulay" <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Open-graphics] Intellectual Property, cash-flow, GPU architecture, OGA2, innovation, dominance! On Mon, May 28, 2012 at 8:08 AM, Nicolas Boulay <[email protected]> wrote: > 2012/5/28 Timothy Normand Miller <[email protected]>: > ... >>> Some hardware project begins with HDL code only, and finish the code >>> before doing real hardware. This could be very long to code a complete >>> working gpu, before anything could be tested on fpga. >> >> I think we can have a single pipeline ready in short order. Then we >> can strap four together and make a thread engine. Yeah, I guess it's >> time to make a list of steps. :) >> > > You should better fix a release date of something. Getting out when > it's done, is not so good, because things are never finished. I'm not going to fix one right now. But if other contributors decide that we can identify a good release date at some point, then we'll do that. > >>> >>> The fpga card was a failure because it was too expensive and the free >>> router can't be used. Hobby's card should not go over 150$ (cf pandora >>> board, beagle board, Raspery Pi, ...). >>> >>> If you develop an full open source HDL code, when it will be ready you >>> could sell a 100$ card with cheap fpga on it. If it could do the job, >>> It will be the proof that you could go on SoC. >> >> The objective is to LICENSE CODE, not sell hardware. But to do that, >> our design has to be the best. Can we do that? Yes, if we get the >> right people involved. >> > > If you licence code, it means that the code is not GPL or LGPL in the > common sens. How could you force a compagny to buy your licence if the > code is free as under opencores.org ? > > A compagny could buy your knowledge to help them integerate the core > but not much. > > If the code is not GPL or LGPL, it's not a "free hardware". If it's > dual licenced code, it means that you own the code, which looks like > Trolltech and MySQL way of doing business. > > You could also have a fondation like Mozilla where hardware > magnufacturer give money to have the "best" hardware possible. This is a really old discussion that's been rehashed 1000 times. Yes, some legal entity will have to own the code so that they can license it. Any licensee that wants to keep any of their chip closed will have to pay money to have the GPL stripped. Otherwise, they'll have to open their entire design. So to a company that makes smartphones, our design is no different from any other GPU IP block they might license, aside from the fact that we may take a different approach to technical support. -- 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)
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