Hi Tim Can you put more info about oga2 which Andre spec'd out? Is this a traditional gpu design or energy-efficient ideas involved?
Thanks Xiaohan On May 27, 2012, at 2:19 PM, Timothy Normand Miller <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm not trying to start an argument as to whether or not "intellectual > property" is real. Maybe I'll blog about that some time. :) I > nevertheless need to point out that being an employee of a State > University of New York binds be in certain ways. > > http://research.binghamton.edu/Innovation/IntellectualProperty.php > > The bottom line for me is that I need to stay far away from any > cash-flow that might occur. And regarding the IP owned by Traversal, > Traversal is defunct, and the IP ownership fell back to me, Howard, > and Andy. We're ready to transfer that, and some responsible > facilitator(s) need(s) to take ownership (literal or figurative) and > see where the project can leverage it. I think that there needs to > still be some centralized entity who can relicense the IP without > having to ask permission from 1000 contributors. > > So, on to what the OGP can do... > > ARM has cornered the market on energy-efficient CPUs. And ARM is > entirely fabless. Maybe the OGP can corner the market on > energy-efficient GPUs. The design would be dual-licensed GPL and > commercial, where for production purposes, all GPL viral-like > characteristics can be stripped in exchange for money, with the > understanding that breaking binary compatibility with the open design > (thereby potentially creating a closed architecture) will cost a LOT > more to license. Our chosen facilitator would handle the money and > fund whatever seems useful to fund. Mostly prototype hardware, > reference designs, donations to other projects, etc. Linux Fund took > over the Open Hardware Foundation, so we can use that. > > Of course, most companies that set out, a priori, to be fabless and > license IP for profit tend to fail disastrously. But we're not trying > to sustain a company on this. Indeed, the profit margin would have to > be painfully small in order to be the least bit competitive anyhow. > Our objective is to put a completely open GPU design out on the > market, and that isn't necessarily profitable. > > So just for fun and science, let's see what we can design. André > Pouliot and Kenneth Østby spec'd out a GPU shader engine design called > OGA2. Let's start there. The first thing to do is my favorite part, > which is to argue about architectural design decisions. Then we make > a C-based prototype to determine functional efficiency, then we code > it in Verilog and synthesize it for gate-level synthesis so we can > judge energy efficiency. > > Think about leveraging the brainpower of the FOSS community to design > a GPU that outperforms and is more energy-efficient than PowerVR. A > compelling-enough design would get market penetration. Eventually, it > would make its way from embedded systems into desktop systems and > supercomputers (GPGPU, etc.), and we would all benefit from having an > open architecture dominate in graphics. > > -- > 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) _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
