My own open source GPU has gotten kinda stalled out because of other priorities. Meanwhile, someone else with an open source GPU got into contact with me, and we're working on a paper to submit to ISCA (deadline in late November). The author of this GPU can reveal his identity if he chooses. For the moment, let's refer to it as Cumberland.
I'm interested in Cumberland because it's simple to alter the architecture. It's synthesizable, but not designed for performance, so the clock rate would be very poor. Lots of long combinatorial paths and structures that make more sense in simulation. But from an architectural perspective, all the right stuff is in there, and it's an interesting design. So we can use it as a tool to complement things like GPGPU-sim. It also works as a complete design in Xilinx FPGA, so while I might (or might not) have started first, this project finished first. Regarding my own design (well, my implementation, with a lot of the design coming from Pouliot and Østby), it's designed for high clock rate, but it's not very flexible. From working on Cumberland, I'm learning things that I'll want to incorporate into my own architecture, so it's a good learning experience. Open Graphics and OpenShader are risky ventures for me, in that they can suck up a lot of time without much assurance of pay-off. I won't go into all the complexities, but suffice it to say, if I'm going to work on GPUs in my day job, I need some publications in that area, and currently I have none. Cumberland (and many thanks to its author) is providing me with an easier path to achieving that short-term goal. This will open me up for spending increasing amounts of time on GPU work. Finally, regarding the kickstarter, these are the Silicon Spectrum guys. They contacted me ages ago and expressed interest in the OGP. When at Tech Source, I worked on X11 drivers for the Number Nine i128, and Silicon Spectrum bought the silicon IP when Number Nine went out of business. They've had various generations of Number Nine and their own technology (as far as I can tell) available as IP cores. And they've now decided to open source the hardware. This is cool, and I encourage people to consider supporting the project. On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 1:58 PM, gary sheppard <[email protected]> wrote: > Seen this the other day and wondered the same. The list sure has been > quiet lately... > > > On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 10:49 AM, Troy Benjegerdes <[email protected]>wrote: > >> >> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/725991125/open-source-graphics-processor-gpu >> >> Thoughts everyone? >> >> Can they pull this off? >> _______________________________________________ >> 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) > -- Timothy Normand Miller, PhD Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Binghamton University http://www.cs.binghamton.edu/~millerti/ Open Graphics Project
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