One Million Dollars For A Shader-Based LGPLv3 GPU

[fbruno]

Francis I just wanted to say you should probably spend some time dumbing things down a little bit for example you need to explain the concepts a bit more thoroughly for people that are interested in the concept but don't understand how it all works.

Some things I recommend expanding on:
- What is an FPGA? and why would people be interested in it.
- What is Verilog?
- What is the difference between an ASIC and FPGA?
- Any other things that are basic to understanding what the project is about.

You campaign at the moment seems targeted only at those who already know what all these technologies are about and that is limiting your potential backers. In my opinion you need to add a bit more marketing to your campaign. I think you should add a whole new section "Why back this project?" here you really need to sell the idea to both education/developers/graphics enthusiasts but also to people interested in open source but are not technical there are many people out there that are not programmers but still very interested in supporting open source.

Finally I've added you campaign to Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/commen...u_kickstarter/
You should keep an eye on the comments it will give you a good idea on how to refine your campaign page to answer common questions people have.

Good luck

Thanks. I'm working on addressing these issues. I'm a hardware engineer in the thick of FPGA design daily, so I probably write too much like an engineer.

I'm also working on solutions for people who play with Raspberry-Pi or Arduino boards to see what is available for FPGA daughter cards (there are some). Being Day #1, I've been slammed with questions and comments, but I will try to get to them in the next few days.

A few things so far:
1) Thanks for the support to everyone and I understand the people who aren't on board. My biggest problem with doing this was that it's kind of niche for a product.
2) I did honestly try to research the licensing before we did the release and I chose LGPL based on a software engineer I am friends with. I liken the GPU to a linked library. I would like anyone be able to use it. want to link it with an ARM, go right ahead. want to do a complete open source SOC, go ahead. But... and this is my sticking point. If you modify it, you have to make the modifications available. If you leave it alone, you just need to provide the source. I know GPL is viral, but I thought LGPL would fit the bill. please correct me if I am wrong.
3) We didn't try to do hardware for a few reasons. I don't think we could have a one size fits all approach. The 2D part will fit in a small FPGA. The 3D part needs more. I think hackers might want a Cyclone V SOC or Xilinx Zynq to play with. I personally would love the time to take the Sparc T1/T2 and pair it with this and see if I could squeeze it into a Stratix V or Vertex 7, but they would cost 10K a piece.

Thanks for the support and I understand the non-suport (not sure of the best word) from some. I'll try my best to follow up w/ anything posted here, or message me via here or kickstarter. Whether we make it or not, this is certainly a learning experience.

Thanks,
Frank

[bridgman]

There are already companies making updated i586 CPUs because the the patents have expired, theres no reason that you couldn't take the GPUs of the same era and make clones, which is all this projects seems like it's going to do.

The point is that companies normally don't release the HW designs of their GPUs, so there's nothing to clone. That's what makes this project different.

[tarceri]

Which was my point, what will be learned from this that can't already be learned from GPU designs whose patents have expired? Because that is what this looks like, a very old GPU design being done on an FPGA.

And yes, the supported OpenGL version matters as that gives you an idea of how advanced their hardware design is, so far all they've shown is that they will be making a GPU design that is no different from just copying a very old GPU that has expired patents.

There are already companies making updated i586 CPUs because the the patents have expired, theres no reason that you couldn't take the GPUs of the same era and make clones, which is all this projects seems like it's going to do.

What are you talking about you cant just clone an old gpu you still need a copy of the design. Also patents stop you from using certain features until they expire, but copyright still exists so even if it were possible to just magically clone the gpu you still couldn't just make an exact copy

[Kivada]

Learning with a project like this is about hardware design not OpenGL programming. You don't need a special card to learn how to write OpenGL code.

Which was my point, what will be learned from this that can't already be learned from GPU designs whose patents have expired? Because that is what this looks like, a very old GPU design being done on an FPGA.

And yes, the supported OpenGL version matters as that gives you an idea of how advanced their hardware design is, so far all they've shown is that they will be making a GPU design that is no different from just copying a very old GPU that has expired patents.

There are already companies making updated i586 CPUs because the the patents have expired, theres no reason that you couldn't take the GPUs of the same era and make clones, which is all this projects seems like it's going to do.

[amagnoni]

its a capitalist world...
if a license free not compete with technology and performance, will be bad...
even paying for licenses, they will gain...

linux is a case of success, because you just need a computer to improve it.
if build the hardware is required, it would be a disaster.

[tarceri]

Even their best case scenario isn't even OpenGL2.1 capable. Not much use for a shader GPU then, since all the fun programmable shader stuff is in OpenGL3+

So again, what will be learned that can't be learned from the now public domain chip designs and the failed OSS GPU project that preceded this?

Learning with a project like this is about hardware design not OpenGL programming. You don't need a special card to learn how to write OpenGL code.

[tarceri]

Francis I just wanted to say you should probably spend some time dumbing things down a little bit for example you need to explain the concepts a bit more thoroughly for people that are interested in the concept but don't understand how it all works.

Some things I recommend expanding on:
- What is an FPGA? and why would people be interested in it.
- What is Verilog?
- What is the difference between an ASIC and FPGA?
- Any other things that are basic to understanding what the project is about.

You campaign at the moment seems targeted only at those who already know what all these technologies are about and that is limiting your potential backers. In my opinion you need to add a bit more marketing to your campaign. I think you should add a whole new section "Why back this project?" here you really need to sell the idea to both education/developers/graphics enthusiasts but also to people interested in open source but are not technical there are many people out there that are not programmers but still very interested in supporting open source.

Finally I've added you campaign to Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/commen...u_kickstarter/
You should keep an eye on the comments it will give you a good idea on how to refine your campaign page to answer common questions people have.

Good luck

[erendorn]

IIRC FPGAs have some pretty bad performance limitations because they are prototyping chips, not something designed to be useful to end users unlike the fantasies put out by those that think that they are the be all, end all of technology.

What can be learned that can't be learned from existing products?

With an LGPLv3 license, what are the odds of it ending up in an ARM or MIPS system?

It's still money best spent making the Gallium3D drivers and OpenGL stack feature complete by hiring a few people to make that their day job.

When you have a business plan that will bring sufficient scale and require sufficient performance, you'll fab chips. That's how it works for a lot of hardware, except here the source is not proprietary. You know. That's how open source work.

I don't know why having a LGPLv3 license would prevent it being used with anything. You chip can communicate with other chips, regardless of their license.

Money would be even better spent on ending world hunger, or in cancer research. Hey, in my opinion, I'd better have money spent on btrfs RAID5 than Gallium3D. What's your point?
This is hardware code for a generic, 3D capable GPU. How can the mainstream-desktop-user focused, Linux graphic stack specific, GPU driver code be compared to that in any meaningful way?

[Kivada]

Kickstarter link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...-processor-gpu

I really hope this project reaches all stretch goals. Its a really interesting concept.

Even their best case scenario isn't even OpenGL2.1 capable. Not much use for a shader GPU then, since all the fun programmable shader stuff is in OpenGL3+

So again, what will be learned that can't be learned from the now public domain chip designs and the failed OSS GPU project that preceded this?

[tarceri]

Kickstarter link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...-processor-gpu

I really hope this project reaches all stretch goals. Its a really interesting concept.