Timothy Miller started a discussion on the lkml regarding whether or not it would be viable for a company to release a completely open video card. He explains, "in short, what I have been proposing to my superiors is the development of a graphics card specifically for open source systems. This means full disclosure on all register interfaces so that no one has to deal with anything closed source (BIOS included). The goal here is to produce a graphics card which is a Free Software geek's dream in terms of openness". He goes on to add:

"The reason this idea came up is because I, as a user of Linux, am often frustrated by the lack of open-source support for graphics cards which are not 'pre-owned'. Sure, SOME companies release specs so that we can develop open source drivers, but those cards tend to be prohibitively expensive, slower than their cheaper counterparts from ATI or nVidia, and they STILL don't document the internals of the BIOS so that the card can be ported to a non-x86 system. Furthermore, since all these vendors focus exclusively on Windows, they don't give much help to open source developers who may produce drivers which work but which are sub-optimal in performance or stability."

Timothy explained that Tech Source, the company that he works for, would need better understanding of the viability of this proposition. To start collecting data, he asked lkml readers for their opinions: "(1) Would the sales volumes of this product be enough to make it worth producing (ie. profitable)? (2) How much would you be willing to pay for it? (3) How do you feel about the choice of neglecting 3D performance as a priority? How important is 3D performance? In what cases is it not? (4) How much extra would you be willing to pay for excellent 3D performance? (5) What's most important to you, performance, price, or stability?" Much of the resulting discussion follows. The general feeling seemed to be that while people liked the idea, the chances of actually making a profit seemed slim. Timothy summarized his viewpoint saying, "the whole issue comes down to this: This is technically feasible. Should we do it?"

From: Timothy Miller [email blocked]
To: Linux Kernel Mailing List [email blocked]
Subject: HARDWARE: Open-Source-Friendly Graphics Cards -- Viable?
Date: 	Wed, 20 Oct 2004 18:02:51 -0400

I've brought this up the following subject before on LKML, but it wasn't 
really resolved, and also, management at my company (Tech Source) has 
only now started to warm up to my idea.

To begin with, I'm an ASIC/FPGA designer, as well as software developer. 
  My own projects here include X11 drivers (DDX modules) for OpenWindows 
and XFree86, as well as the bulk of a graphics ASIC which we use in our 
air traffic control systems.  The point:  we have a lot of experience 
with graphics hardware and system software.

In short, what I have been proposing to my superiors is the development 
of a graphics card specifically for open source systems.  This means 
full disclosure on all register interfaces so that no one has to deal 
with anything closed source (BIOS included).  The goal here is to 
produce a graphics card which is a Free Software geek's dream in terms 
of openness.  If Tech Source (me being its avatar) can develop a 
relationship with the Linux (and BSD) community, users and developers 
can get a product that they want without being locked out by hardware 
vendors that feel they have to protect every last little bit of IP 
relating to their products.  The EXPRESS PURPOSE of this product is to 
be free-software-friendly.

I can produce more detail later, but first, some characteristics and 
advantages of what I'm proposing:

- x86 BIOS/OpenBoot/OpenFirmware code under BSD and GPL license
- kernel drivers under BSD and GPL license
- X11 module under MIT license
- flashable PROM so that boot code can be added for more platforms
- usable as the console on any platform that can take a PCI, AGP, or 
PCI-Express card
- downloadable schematic for the circuit board
- FPGA-based graphics engine so it's reprogrammable
- instructions on how to reprogram the FPGA, so it's hackable
- if we discontinue a product, we may release the Verilog code for the FPGA
- Since this is designed to be open-source-friendly, we want to play by 
the rules of the open-source community.
- Tech Source would actively participate in the development and 
maintenance of our own drivers.
- We will actually pay attention to problems and concerns raised by 
users and developers.
- We won't be control-freaks.

The desired effects, for developers, of these characteristics would include:

- The card "just works" with Linux because, maybe, the drivers would go 
into main-line
- The drivers are not a debugging/tainting nightmare, since they are 
open source
- The drivers are easy to work on, since you don't ever have to guess 
about anything.
- The drivers are easy to debug because
     (a) we document everything, and
     (b) we'll talk to you.
- People will think it's cool and want to hack it.

The desired effect for end users:

- It just works.
- It's not a liability for system stability.


The reason this idea came up is because I, as a user of Linux, am often 
frustrated by the lack of open-source support for graphics cards which 
are not "pre-owned".  Sure, SOME companies release specs so that we can 
develop open source drivers, but those cards tend to be prohibitively 
expensive, slower than their cheaper counterparts from ATI or nVidia, 
and they STILL don't document the internals of the BIOS so that the card 
can be ported to a non-x86 system.  Furthermore, since all these vendors 
focus exclusively on Windows, they don't give much help to open source 
developers who may produce drivers which work but which are sub-optimal 
in performance or stability.  (Here, I have to make the obligatory CYA 
statement that there is nothing wrong with their business models -- it's 
just unfortunate for Linux users.)

By contrast, what _I_ want to produce would be supportable by both Tech 
Source (mostly me), and also by anyone else who wants to hack it.  I 
would be one of the primary designers of the chip, so I would know it 
inside and out.  I would also be the primary driver developer, with the 
help of others on LKML.  So, I would be here to help, but hopefully, the 
documentation would be clear enough (and the drivers I write, complete 
enough) so that no one gets stuck having to guess or reverse-engineer 
anything.

There are, however, some caveats.  Tech Source is not willing to foot a 
lot of development capital for this project.  That means we can't spend 
an excessive amount of time on developing a fully virtex shading 
programmable 3D engine, and my superiors are not willing, as yet, to 
give me sufficient funding to produce an ASIC.  What this means is that 
the design has to be small and simple and focus primarily on 2D 
performance so that it can fit into an FPGA.

A 2D rendering engine is easy to parallelize, so although we can't clock 
the FPGA design as fast as an ASIC design, we can easily saturate a 
128-bit DDR memory bus at, say, 200Mhz.  A 3D rendering engine, on the 
other hand, is a beast, and our performance will be less than stellar 
(although certainly better than doing it all with the host CPU).  (If 
there IS sufficient demand, we would LOVE to produce a 
performance-competitive 3D chip, but keep in mind that that would be a 
huge and expensive development effort, and would result in an expensive 
product.)

The advantage of having this in an FPGA is that we can add features and 
fix bugs as necessary, and provide a flash utility for everyone to use 
to upgrade.  You run the utility, cycle power, and you're set.  This 
way, if some kernel developer who is concerned about latency decides 
that having an interrupt signal occur on some event that we don't 
already cover, we can add the feature and supply a new bitfile in 
relatively short order.  You wouldn't have to buy a new card to upgrade.

All of this, however, is a pipe-dream if it's not cost effective for 
Tech Source.  I have to make a very strong case to the CEO.  I think 
everyone at this company is excited about the IDEA of developing this 
product.  But we have no clue what the market is like.  It's not worth 
it to us to develop this if only a handful of kernel hackers are going 
to buy it.  We're guessing that some workstation and server vendors who 
deal in Linux would like to resell this sort of product, because if our 
drivers are in the mainline Linux kernel, it'll "just work".  On the 
other hand, maybe they're all perfectly happy with the graphics 
controllers that come built into many Intel motherboards and have "good 
enough" support.

The very fact that no other company has openly considered going to the 
level of openness that I'm proposing might suggest that what I'm 
proposing is completely out of touch with reality, because it just can't 
be profitable.

So, here are some questions to answer:

(1) Would the sales volumes of this product be enough to make it worth 
producing (ie. profitable)?
(2) How much would you be willing to pay for it?
(3) How do you feel about the choice of neglecting 3D performance as a 
priority?  How important is 3D performance?  In what cases is it not?
(4) How much extra would you be willing to pay for excellent 3D performance?
(5) What's most important to you, performance, price, or stability?

Feel free to insert your own questions and answers here.  Remember, I'm 
an engineer.  My understanding of business is dilettantish at best.

I haven't worked out a complete design spec for this product.  The 
reason is that what we think people want and what people REALLY want may 
not be congruent.  If you have a good idea for a piece of graphics 
hardware which you think would be beneficial to the free software 
community (and worth it for a company to produce), then Tech Source, as 
a graphics company, might be willing to sell it.


Oh, and before you flame me, YES, I AM doing market research for Tech 
Source here, but NO, I am not doing it at THEIR request.  They told me 
that if I wanted to do this, I would have to make a case for it, and 
that's what I'm trying to do.  This is MY idea, and I would personally 
love to have a product like what I'm describing.  I would also 
personally very much enjoy WORKING on such a project, because then I 
wouldn't have to do more boring stuff.  There's a lot of selfishness 
here on my part.  But it's selfishess that I hope everyone else will 
benefit from.



From: Alan Cox [email blocked]
Subject: Re: HARDWARE: Open-Source-Friendly Graphics Cards -- Viable?
Date: 	Thu, 21 Oct 2004 00:10:26 +0100

On Mer, 2004-10-20 at 23:02, Timothy Miller wrote:
> - The card "just works" with Linux because, maybe, the drivers would go 
> into main-line

That bit ought to "just work" 8)

> - The drivers are easy to work on, since you don't ever have to guess 
> about anything.
> - The drivers are easy to debug because
>      (a) we document everything, and
>      (b) we'll talk to you.

Some other vendors pretty much did this but the takeup isn't that vast
because writing 3D drivers is not trivial (we have docs for about 5
cards and no drivers, some are pretty old some are fairly passable
cards)

> and they STILL don't document the internals of the BIOS so that the card 
> can be ported to a non-x86 system.  Furthermore, since all these vendors

Talking to one very large motherboard video company they actually can't
because the analogue side is done by the board vendor as is things like
the RAM choice.
 
> give me sufficient funding to produce an ASIC.  What this means is that 
> the design has to be small and simple and focus primarily on 2D 
> performance so that it can fit into an FPGA.

X actually needs very little functionality nowdays, although some of it
does not map well onto a generic 2D rendering card. Notably most 2D
engines lack alpha blend.

Essentially if you can do alpha, bitblit, blit from main memory and
a couple of fills and colour-expands X is happy.

> (1) Would the sales volumes of this product be enough to make it worth 
> producing (ie. profitable)?

I'm very dubious I must admit. 


I've actually always wondered what a hybrid video device would look like
for 3D. Doing the alpha blend and very basic operations only in the
hardware that are expensive in software - alpha and perhaps some of the
texture scaling, but walking textures in software, doing shaders in
software and so on.

Alan


From: Andre Eisenbach [email blocked]
Subject: Re: HARDWARE: Open-Source-Friendly Graphics Cards -- Viable?
Date: 	Wed, 20 Oct 2004 15:17:05 -0700

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 18:02:51 -0400, Timothy Miller
<Timothy Miller> wrote:
> In short, what I have been proposing to my superiors is the development
> of a graphics card specifically for open source systems. 

That sounds truly great! However...

If the graphics card mostly supports 2D initially, it's really not
much better then just about any off the shelf graphics card with VESA
drivers. As in, the hardware doesn't need to be open for just that.
Most (all?) the frustration in Linux graphics card land comes from
unsupported/closed 3D drivers.

I obviously understand that it would be very costly to try to catch up
with ATI/NVidia in 3D land, but if you manage to get an open platform
out there which has great 3D potential (hardware wise) and is easily
programmable, I am sure the open source community would _love_ to try
to jointly develop fast 3D firmware (and drivers). That way Techsource
won't have to front the cost (other than for hardware).

So a open, programmable 3D hardware platform would open the door for
open source 3D engine innovation.

If you get this off the road, that would be very impressive and most
exciting to watch.

However, if you're only going to focus on 2D, I don't see the
excitement. 2D works pretty much for everyone, no?

Cheers,
    Andre



From: Timothy Miller [email blocked]
Subject: Re: HARDWARE: Open-Source-Friendly Graphics Cards -- Viable?
Date: 	Wed, 20 Oct 2004 16:48:19 -0700 (PDT)

I'm posting from home, so this won't look right.  Sorry.

Anyhow, Andre Eisenbach said this:

>>>
If the graphics card mostly supports 2D initially, it's really not
much better then just about any off the shelf graphics card with VESA
drivers. As in, the hardware doesn't need to be open for just that.
Most (all?) the frustration in Linux graphics card land comes from
unsupported/closed 3D drivers.
<<<

I have tried using cards with VESA drivers before, and I found it to be
very painful.  Certainly, you can turn off certain features and get a
reasonably useful UI experience, but dragging windows around with "show
window contents while moving" enabled is painfully slow, even with AGP
4x.  Just imagine doing it over PCI.

When it comes to desktop applications, the FIRST thing you need is good
2D acceleration.  In fact, that's really the ONLY thing.  OpenOffice
does not need to use OpenGL.  GNOME doesn't need to use OpenGL.  In
fact, for the most part, they don't bother.  There are some instances
where they use OpenGL, but most of what a workstation user does fits
squarely within all the functionality supplied by Xlib, which is
entirely 2D.

Ok, so with limited 3D support, it's almost not worth trying to play
Doom II (let alone III), but that's never affected me.  On Linux, I use
nedit, Mozilla, GNOME, KDE... ALL 2D apps.  I use Linux as a
development platform for chip logic, X server modules, and web sites. 
I also do a fair amount of tinkering with CPU-intensive things like
genetic algorithms.  In fact, the ONLY time I have EVER played with 3D
on Linux was when I fiddled with some of the screensavers.

Ok, so I'm really limited in my use.  But what about what a secretary
would use?  GNOME, OpenOffice, Evolution, Mozilla.  All 100% 2D apps. 
How about a sysadmin?  Well, he wants something simple in his server
that lets him run his Red Hat configuration tools.  What's a system
integrator want?  Something that won't result in any tech-support
calls.

Nevertheless, I do think 3D is very important.  MacOS has moved to pure
3D, and Longhorn's Aero Glass thingy is all 3D too.  Plus there's that
Sun thing.  With Linux, we're kinda constrained by the fact that core
X11 protocol is strictly 2D, but soon, GNOME and KDE will surely find a
way around that too.  I know we could not sell a graphics device which
did not have ANY 3D support.  But keep in mind that the more
sophistocated the 3D support, the larger an FPGA you'll need.  The
prices of FPGA's go up exponentially with die area.

I've been given a very limited budget here for development.  (Well, I
haven't been given a budget yet--I've just been told that we're not
going to spend $100K to do an ASIC for something this speculative.) 
I'm further constrained by the impact of FPGA chip cost on the end
product.

Here's an off-the-cuff guess as to the parts cost for one board (I'm
sure I have most of the prices wrong):

- FPGA             $30
- PCB               $5
- DAC              $10
- DVI transmitter  $10
- RAM              $20
- Assembly         $??
- Development cost $??
- Profit           $??

The parts alone are $75, and I've left plenty out.  If the board is
profitable at $100... who will buy it?

I'll do whatever anyone wants, as long as it fits into these
constraints!!

One idea I have is to merge the 2D and 3D pipelines into one.  This
way, we can get better 3D functionality, and 2D comes in for free.  The
problem is that 2D performance would be a LOT slower in this case.  But
forget I said that, because it's absolutely pointless to talk
implementation details at this point.  

The whole issue comes down to this:  This is technically feasible. 
Should we do it?


The open source community often complains about hardware vendors being
too tight-lipped with their IP.  Here, we have a golden opportunity to
get what we want, both in terms of features and disclosure.  How do we
figure out how to not miss that opportunity?


In case you're wondering why I'm writing so much about this... it's
because I REALLY REALLY REALLY want to do this.  As a geek who enjoys
designing stuff, this is an exciting idea to me.  I'm also a free
software zealot, but I often feel like a leech because I haven't given
anything back (well, there's GTerm, but who cares.).  I just don't know
how to justify the cost of this project to my employer.



From: J.A. Magallon [email blocked]
Subject: Re: HARDWARE: Open-Source-Friendly Graphics Cards -- Viable?
Date: 	Thu, 21 Oct 2004 00:30:40 +0000


On 2004.10.21, Timothy Miller wrote:
...
> 
> When it comes to desktop applications, the FIRST thing you need is good
> 2D acceleration.  In fact, that's really the ONLY thing.  OpenOffice
> does not need to use OpenGL.  GNOME doesn't need to use OpenGL.  In
> fact, for the most part, they don't bother.  There are some instances
> where they use OpenGL, but most of what a workstation user does fits
> squarely within all the functionality supplied by Xlib, which is
> entirely 2D.
> 

Have you looked at xorg-x11 recently ? IE, the Composite, Damage and
Render extensions ?

OSX uses OpenGL because it is the API they have to access things like
alpha blending, image scaling, and so on, so they can do those nice
effects of transparencies, shadows, genie's and so on. At least until
Panther. For me, it looks like the new Tiger implementation (CoreImage) is
their own implementation of the OpenGL pixel pipeline, talking directly
to drivers instead of using OpenGL as intermediary.

Probably desktop systems would not need the T&L part of 3D, but be sure
they will need at least managing windows at different depths, blending them,
anti-aliasing them an so on.

So, as I see it, for an appealing 2D card, you need to program a 2 1/2
graphics engine, with really _fast_ alpha blending and antialiasing.
You can only kill the matrix part. I do not know if you will be able to
get rid completely of floating point, for those alpha mixes and assorted
candy...

--
[email blocked]     \               Software is like sex:
werewolf!able!es                         \         It's better when it's free
Mandrakelinux release 10.1 (Community) for i586
Linux 2.6.9-rc4-mm1 (gcc 3.4.1 (Mandrakelinux 10.1 3.4.1-4mdk)) #4



From: Timothy Miller [email blocked]
Subject: Re: HARDWARE: Open-Source-Friendly Graphics Cards -- Viable?
Date: 	Wed, 20 Oct 2004 17:47:21 -0700 (PDT)


--- "J.A. Magallon" [email blocked] wrote:

> 
> Have you looked at xorg-x11 recently ? IE, the Composite, Damage and
> Render extensions ?
> 
> OSX uses OpenGL because it is the API they have to access things like
> alpha blending, image scaling, and so on, so they can do those nice
> effects of transparencies, shadows, genie's and so on. At least until
> Panther. For me, it looks like the new Tiger implementation
> (CoreImage) is
> their own implementation of the OpenGL pixel pipeline, talking
> directly
> to drivers instead of using OpenGL as intermediary.
> 
> Probably desktop systems would not need the T&L part of 3D, but be
> sure
> they will need at least managing windows at different depths,
> blending them,
> anti-aliasing them an so on.
> 
> So, as I see it, for an appealing 2D card, you need to program a 2
> 1/2
> graphics engine, with really _fast_ alpha blending and antialiasing.
> You can only kill the matrix part. I do not know if you will be able
> to
> get rid completely of floating point, for those alpha mixes and
> assorted
> candy...


Alright.  Excellent points.  If I don't have to do any scaling or
rotation, alpha-blending won't be that big of a deal.  I already would
have to read the destination of applying a raster-op or a planemask, so
alpha-blend would become just another part of the merge at the end of
the pipeline.  

Of course, with only 8 significant bits, you could get noticable
cumulative round-off error.

As you start to add 3D features to the 2D pipeline, the point in
keeping them separate diminishes.


Oh, and there's antialiasing... now, sometimes, it just LOOKS like
antialiasing, like with the font server used by X11.  When it renders
characters, it produces an 8-bit grayscale bitmap which is
pre-antialiased, which you then have to color while rendering.  If you
want to do other things, then you get back into scaling, which is just
a special case of texture-mapping.



From: David Lang [email blocked]
Subject: Re: HARDWARE: Open-Source-Friendly Graphics Cards -- Viable?
Date: 	Wed, 20 Oct 2004 15:26:08 -0700 (PDT)

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004, Timothy Miller wrote:

> Sure, SOME companies release specs so that we can develop 
> open source drivers, but those cards tend to be prohibitively expensive, 
> slower than their cheaper counterparts from ATI or nVidia...

Tim, I think this is the key problem. with the current ATI/nVidia cards 
beign in the $50 range (with other cards on the market for as low as 
$30) are you really going to be able to come up with a card that's price 
competitive? (completely ignoring the performance question)

as for your other question of if an open approach could be viable (after 
all nobody does it today so doesn't that proove it isn't)

this is where there is a significant disagreement. the Linux folks think 
that such openess would be very viable and the companies are just pursuing 
a legacy approach, but the companies are scared to open things up becouse 
they don't believe that they would remain viable.

since nobody has done this yet (for video cards anyeay) there is no proof 
one way or the other.

David Lang

-- 
There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it
so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to 
make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
  -- C.A.R. Hoare


From: Martin Schlemmer [email blocked]
To: Timothy Miller [email blocked]
Subject: Re: HARDWARE: Open-Source-Friendly Graphics Cards -- Viable? [u]
Date: 	Thu, 21 Oct 2004 00:19:07 +0200

On Wed, 2004-10-20 at 18:02 -0400, Timothy Miller wrote:

Hi,

> So, here are some questions to answer:
> 
> (1) Would the sales volumes of this product be enough to make it worth 
> producing (ie. profitable)?

No idea - I for one would think that most gamer Linux users will buy
it if its got the performance 3D wise - many others that only want 2D,
or at least accelerated render support in X, as well as XV, etc.

> (2) How much would you be willing to pay for it?

I am not that a big a gamer, so my Geforce 5700 ultra is fine for my
needs.  If the card have relative performance to that, and drivers is
the same quality as nvidia's (but hopefully better, and really not ati's
crappy standard), then I would fork the same amount as you would for an
5700, or slightly more if not that much.  Not sure what that amounts to.

> (3) How do you feel about the choice of neglecting 3D performance as a 
> priority?  How important is 3D performance?  In what cases is it not?

Yeah, I think it is important - just for decent performance in
gnome/kde, you need a card with accel RENDER support, as well as XV/GL
for video.  Not to talk about those of us that are heavy gamers, or like
me who like my ut2004/quake3/nvn once or twice a week.

> (4) How much extra would you be willing to pay for excellent 3D performance?

Well, above price was for performance on par or just below a 5700.  I
know it will be more expensive to develop, so if it was a bit more
expensive than the same class nvidia/ati, but with better drivers, I
would be sold.  The reality of the issue is just while I love my linux,
I rather taint my kernel than crappy X performance or no gaming now and
then.

> (5) What's most important to you, performance, price, or stability?
> 

Performance and stability, but it being 3 times more expensive than
on par nvidia/ati cards wont cut it.


Hope that is not too vague to help a bit.


Regards,

-- 
Martin Schlemmer



From: Kurt Wall [email blocked]
Subject: Re: HARDWARE: Open-Source-Friendly Graphics Cards -- Viable?
Date: 	Wed, 20 Oct 2004 22:29:57 -0400

On Wed, Oct 20, 2004 at 06:02:51PM -0400, Timothy Miller took 163 lines to write:
> I've brought this up the following subject before on LKML, but it wasn't 
> really resolved, and also, management at my company (Tech Source) has 
> only now started to warm up to my idea.

[long snip]

> So, here are some questions to answer:
> 
> (1) Would the sales volumes of this product be enough to make it worth 
> producing (ie. profitable)?

Hard to say. My crystal ball doesn't work any better than yours.

> (2) How much would you be willing to pay for it?

It depends. I'd probably be willing to drop $100 USD on such a card simply
to vote with my wallet what my priorities and values are.

> (3) How do you feel about the choice of neglecting 3D performance as a 
> priority?  How important is 3D performance?  In what cases is it not?

For most of what I do, 3-D is irrelevant. It makes nice eye candy, but
that's about it. For games, hardware-accelerated 3-D is more or less
required.

> (4) How much extra would you be willing to pay for excellent 3D performance?

An extra $100 USD. For superior 3-D performance (and a buttload of RAM on
the card), I'd go an extra $200.

> (5) What's most important to you, performance, price, or stability?

Stability, followed by performance. I'm less price sensitive than I used to
be.

Regards,

Kurt



From: Zan Lynx [email blocked]
Subject: Re: HARDWARE: Open-Source-Friendly Graphics Cards -- Viable?
Date: 	Wed, 20 Oct 2004 19:25:21 -0600

On Wed, 2004-10-20 at 16:48 -0700, Timothy Miller wrote:
> I'm posting from home, so this won't look right.  Sorry.
> 
> Anyhow, Andre Eisenbach said this:
> 
> >>>
> If the graphics card mostly supports 2D initially, it's really not
> much better then just about any off the shelf graphics card with VESA
> drivers. As in, the hardware doesn't need to be open for just that.
> Most (all?) the frustration in Linux graphics card land comes from
> unsupported/closed 3D drivers.
> <<<
> 
> I have tried using cards with VESA drivers before, and I found it to be
> very painful.  Certainly, you can turn off certain features and get a
> reasonably useful UI experience, but dragging windows around with "show
> window contents while moving" enabled is painfully slow, even with AGP
> 4x.  Just imagine doing it over PCI.
> 
> When it comes to desktop applications, the FIRST thing you need is good
> 2D acceleration.  In fact, that's really the ONLY thing.  OpenOffice
> does not need to use OpenGL.  GNOME doesn't need to use OpenGL.  In
> fact, for the most part, they don't bother.  There are some instances
> where they use OpenGL, but most of what a workstation user does fits
> squarely within all the functionality supplied by Xlib, which is
> entirely 2D.
[snip]

My opinion, for what its worth:

Do 3D first and only.  2D is a subset of 3D.  Implement as much of
OpenGL as you can in hardware and software can emulate any 2D interface
desired.

I agree that existing graphics cards do 2D just fine.  I can get a ATI
card for $20 that does all the 2D I need.  But 2D isn't enough for me.
I spend $400 on one Nvidia card.  Maybe I'm not the average, common
user, but users like me have the highest profit margin. :-)

I'm a pragmatic user.  I'd like full-featured Open Source drivers for my
Nvidia card but I use the binary because they work really well and for
me, (excellent_performance - closed_drivers) > (crappy_performance +
open_drivers).

If it can be done well enough to run Doom 3 in 640x480 at 20 fps for
less than $500, I'll buy one.  That's the performance level where I'd
consider sacrificing 60 fps for the open drivers.

Of course, in 5 years I'll expect 120 fps so its definitely a moving
target.
-- 
Zan Lynx [email blocked]



From: Albert Cahalan [email blocked]
Subject: Re: HARDWARE: Open-Source-Friendly Graphics Cards -- Viable?
Date: 	21 Oct 2004 00:48:18 -0400

Timothy Miller writes:

> (2) How much would you be willing to pay for it?
>
> (3) How do you feel about the choice of neglecting
> 3D performance as a priority?  How important is 3D
> performance?  In what cases is it not?
>
> (4) How much extra would you be willing to pay for
> excellent 3D performance?
>
> (5) What's most important to you, performance, price,
> or stability?

Stability with a kernel of my choice on possibly
non-x86 hardware matters most. Digital DVI, fanless
operation, and DVD scaling are next. After that, 3D.

I'm not so sure you have to give up 3D. You can put
at least 4 AltiVec-capable "G4" CPUs on a PCI board
without having horrible power and temperature issues.
(Perhaps an AGP board can safely support even more.)
Each will do 4 32-bit floating-point fused-multiply-add
operations per cycle. That's got to be good for something.
I think the latest chips have built-in memory interfaces.
They have RapidIO interfaces. So you make your FPGA
speak RapidIO protocol (easy) and have each CPU render
every fourth frame.

One could even put the X server on the card.

Ultimately, this is a huge risk, with potentially
great reward. One must take some risks to succeed,
and this one is a whopper.

• Slashdot discussion
• Archive of above thread
• KernelTrap interview with Alan Cox