One Million Dollars For A Shader-Based LGPLv3 GPU

[phoronix]

Phoronix: One Million Dollars For A Shader-Based LGPLv3 GPU

A company is going to attempt to open-source their graphics accelerator 2D hardware design under the LGPLv3 license. Additionally, they claim for one million dollars they would be able to come up with a 3D shader-based open-source graphics accelerator...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTQ4MDU

[kettysmith]

i dont think that one million dollars is enough for this kind of project.

[ayandon]

Suuestion

I would be more interested to see a project like Lucid Virtu MVP.
http://www.lucidlogix.com/product-virtu-mvp.shtml

I would donate $50 to $100 on such projects.

[curaga]

I don't know if there are any precedents, quick googling didn't reveal any. But I would argue that since I can make it do other things tomorrow, like calculating pi, by typing on my computer, it is software.

Then there's the selling aspect too. If you only keep it in a repo somewhere, without even selling FPGAs (or selling empty FPGAs and telling users how to load it), you should be in the clear: see ffmpeg/mplayer which are affected by approx 10^7 software patents.

[Brane215]

I'm not so sure you could defend that on your own against legal team.

What exactly is a software ? A small blob that you download into FPGA ? But that blob is not SW that gets executed but bistream that configures HARDWARE.

[curaga]

[quote]main players already have bunch of patents and capable legal teams for battle if need arises.

What do you do if you get nice and cosy letter from their legal theams ?{/quote]

As long as it's in a FPGA, it's software, and thus hardware patents do not apply. So the free world doesn't need to care, SW patent countries like USSA need not apply.

[Brane215]

I don't see the point of this.

FPGA can be great for solving the problems that one can't solve with custom-made silicon, but once it has to compete with it 1:1, FPGA sorely looses.

So, since GPU is so area and power intensive and since it has great players on the field that are opening gradually their documentation ( AMD and nVidia, even Intel) I fail to see any advantage of this.

Even if you open the documentation and let's say you come performancewise sufficiently close for someone to choose your solution, how would s/he escape patent suit ?

main players already have bunch of patents and capable legal teams for battle if need arises.

What do you do if you get nice and cosy letter from their legal theams ?

[smitty3268]

I'm saying the money would be better spent hiring more full time Gallium3D devs.

I think the money would be better spent on feeding starving children in 3rd world countries. However, I'm not sure how that relates in any way to this kickstarter campaign. It's unlikely people contributing would want their money going to some unrelated task, or they would have sent it there in the first place.

[entropy]

Sorry for taking so long to respond.
2D without the VGA (Only needed for true VGA applications, i.e. booting legacy PCs) will fit nicely in a 7010.
The VGA may fit also, but it would be tight and not really necessary as the 2D part is much higher performance.

Thank you!

[fbruno]

Sure. You can easily get Nvidia level GPU, you only need Nvidia level R&D budget.
Which are around 800 MUSD a year, a perfect target to start with any project.

We have no intention of ever competing against AMD or Nvidia for the 800M/yr reasons you mention above.
My goal is to give back to the community and try to get the project to the next level if possible. We'll still work on a shader architecture. We are hardware hackers and digital designers at heart. The only question is if we get their via the open or closed source route. I'd much rather do it this way, be open about it and let the community benefit.

Probably a bad analogy, but Linus released the linux Kernel 20 years about almost. Look what it has become. Maybe a similar renaissance can happen in hardware.