Open Source Video Card

[yekim]

Just wondering if anyone knows about anyone working on an open-source video card?

I've been thinking lately how cool it would be to get the open source community working on some hardware based around a fast FPGA - so developers can optimize the hardware to the game, and instead of buying a new $400 card every few years, you just download a new bitstream to your card to upgrade functionality and performance. I heard rumors of something like this in the past, but I really can't remember the name of the project...

 

[xtknight]

You can't upgrade the performance by sending a new BIOS. You need a chip that's clocked higher.

 

[yekim]

Originally posted by: xtknight
You can't upgrade the performance by sending a new BIOS. You need a chip that's clocked higher.

An FPGA is not the same thing as a BIOS. Its a reconfigurable chip. Learn more...

Imagine having a video card that doesn't support H.264.

Then imagine an open source developer releasing an extension for an FPGA that did H.264.

Finally, imagine downloading that extension INTO the FPGA on your video card (i.e. INTO the chip).

Its not a simple BIOS upgrade, its a reconfigurable GPU

 

[hans030390]

interesting.

it probably hasn't happened...nor will it probably ever happen any time soon

 

[screw3d]

FPGAs are too slow to do anything productive.. unless there's something i don't know

 

[jasonja]

FPGA's are slow and really expensive when compared to ASICs. Most ASIC companies (including nVidia and ATI) already use large FPGA systems from IKOS or QuickTurn to simulate their chips while they design them. They are horribly slow and in most cases can't even be built large enough to simulate the entire functionality of today's GPUs.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: yekim

Originally posted by: xtknight
You can't upgrade the performance by sending a new BIOS. You need a chip that's clocked higher.

An FPGA is not the same thing as a BIOS. Its a reconfigurable chip. Learn more...

Imagine having a video card that doesn't support H.264.

Then imagine an open source developer releasing an extension for an FPGA that did H.264.

Finally, imagine downloading that extension INTO the FPGA on your video card (i.e. INTO the chip).

Its not a simple BIOS upgrade, its a reconfigurable GPU

What I really meant was flash. Using something like this is like using a Pentium for graphics processing. Maybe a little faster on than a Pentium because you can configure it. Still, it's hardly ideal and really defeats the purpose. I'm sure you can't just parallelize it all of a sudden with pixel pipelines, etc.