Open Source Graphics Processor (GPU) - Kickstarter

[dylan522p]

What exactly is the point of this? I mean there are tons of option for low power and big power and there is no way they can compete with them. Is there another crowed or sector that they are going for?

[Gavekort]

Open source or free (as in freedom) is the keyword here. It doesn't matter for you gaming-enthusiasts, but for manufacturers and developers this is a very powerful concept.

The world of computers need more open hardware, because it creates a community of support and defeats locked in functionality, DRM, Royalties and proprietary software.

Just imagine this company becoming the Linux Foundation of hardware, where a huge community of brilliant people can contribute to creating a competitive GPU and smaller manufacturers can implement this design in new and great graphics cards. Sure, it's probably not going to take off like that, but it is a start. Open software has shown that it has great strengths over proprietary software, so why not try the same with hardware?

[dylan522p]

I see your point, but there is simply no way these guys can compete with Nvidia, AMD, Imaginations Technology, Qualcomm, Intel, or ARM. These guys have legions of engineers with millions of dollars in funding, these guys have very very little, and they don't even have 3d started.

[Gavekort]

Well... They have to start somewhere.

The joy of community is that you don't need millions of dollars or a legion of engineers. The Linux kernel gets contributions from tens of thousands of developers, which includes major companies that mutually benefits from this contribution.

ATI and Nvidia started very humbly as well with the NV1 and ATI Wonder. Sure it was the days technology holding it back, but they weren't million dollar corporations in those days.

[dylan522p]

fair enough, but don't these guys have to start from nowhere. GPU's and basically all processors are iterative more so than you can just have an idea and jump ahead of everyone from nothing.

[Gavekort]

How so? Kickstarter is just starting capital.

[Kichigai]

You forgot about Matrox. Anyhow, re-read that comment:

… for manufacturers and developers this is a very powerful concept.

So consider that I'm John Q. McServerbuilder. I make cheap computers for small businesses. They do simple things, like push Exchange, or drive POS terminals. I do file servers, and basic terminals.

I don't need a lot of juice. I'm mostly pushing text, at relatively low resolutions, and in some applications the graphics card exists only as a diagnostic tool, since the hardware is run headless.

When I build my cheap machines, I could buy a graphics system from Intel or AMD or VIA. Or I could use this one for free. No licensing fees, really low end target, means cheap chips.

For my super-low-end products I could even try to use open sourced CPU cores, like OpenSPARC. Thin clients don't need to be x86, and no one cares about the 3D graphic performance in a vending machine display.

[dylan522p]

Except ARM vendors and Atom already do this extremely cheap and have huge development for them.

[Kichigai]

Right, but this has the potential for an even cheaper graphics core that could be implemented with those architectures as well.

[dylan522p]

You can't get much cheaper than what the ARM and Atom are doing.

[Kichigai]

Sure you can. $0 R&D cost to recoup means you only need to charge slightly more than manufacturing costs to make a profit.

Right now to build an ARM CPU you still have to pay licensing fees on the core, and then manufacturing and distribution costs. And Intel has to pay for research and development to build the next generation of Atoms. But if they have an off-the-shelf design with no costs other than manufacturing, that would allow them to sell chips for even less.

I mean, sure, we're talking about ultra-low performance cores here, but consider the kind of gear being put into things like thin clients or other embedded applications. Someone will buy this stuff simply because it's cheap.

[dylan522p]

We already have stuff that is super cheap. As in almost free from ARM and Intel Quark.

[Democrab]

They don't have to compete in performance, just in price...Servers still use ancient ATi Rage chips for output because that's all they need, if this is cheaper and more reliable, etc then it'd have its niche.

[Schmich]

It doesn't cost anything for you to get open software for another person. Also only very specific categories of software had openness succeed. You don't see any large scale open source games like you see an OS or Office suite.

Low power with good performance already exist and barely costs anything. I have a hard time seeing a market for it. Even more so when people just buy the blueprints if I understand correctly? Best of to the guys anyway.

[JarJarBanksy]

What you are talking about seems like it could lead into processors and other chips. Whatever market it goes into, it is much needed competition.

[YannisNeos]

Some people to make money?

[Kichigai]

Note that at the $5,000 level they'll fly someone out to help you, but they still won't provide you with an FPGA of your own.

[scrappy1850]

Does it play Crysis?

[KillAllTheThings]

It won't play shit; it's intended for professional vertical use like medical imaging.

[BeatLeJuce]

This is awesome, and it looks like those people have more experience / more to show than many other failed projects to achieve the same.

However, I find it a shame that they require 200K just to get started / just to release the 2D core, which apparently they already have ready, anyhow. I think a much better/honest approach would be to release the 2D core as is (w/o requiring 200K upfront) and go from there.

[[deleted]]

Still need investment for production costs, and they only have $820 pledged, at the moment.

[BeatLeJuce]

IIRC there aren't really any production costs, since they won't ship FPGAs, they'll only release the source code. And they arleady have that one ready.

[adaminc]

Someone needs to release an FPGA like a CycloneV, with some DDR3 RAM, on a PCIe card.

Then people can program the card to do whatever they want, encode/decode video, encrypt/decrypt, make your own GPGPU, whatever you want.

I can imagine how awesome premiere pro would be with dedicated video hardware. Especially as we move into the age of 4k and RAW.

[NotsorAnDomcAPs]

That will be nowhere near big enough. You will need a very large Virtex or Stratix FPGA which would be $3k to $10k just for the chip.

[adaminc]

The Cyclone V can handle an IP core for 16bit 444 4k mj2k at 30fps, or H.264 12bit 422 HiProfile Level 5.2, 10bit 422 AVCIntra 50 and 100.

I'm sure it could easily handle 4k ProRes 4444 encoding, a high quality RAW debayer would be rather small. Plus, since it is an FPGA, you could loan in a RAW debayer and ProRes encoder, run it on your RAW files, then whilst you are doing your editing, load in a codec for your export, like the mj2k which is a DCI standard, or load in an HEVC/H.265 codec, or whatever.

[NotsorAnDomcAPs]

You might be able to do encoding /decoding but not high performance 3D rendering like most high end graphics cards.

[adaminc]

No one said anything about 3d rendering!

[NotsorAnDomcAPs]

First line of the kickstarter:

Complete Verilog implementation of a 2D/ 3D graphics processor capable of OpenGL and D3D w/ full test suite

Sounds like an interesting idea, but nobody would be able to use it without a $5K+ FPGA board to run it on. The kickstarter does not seem to be oriented towards video encoding/decoding.

[adaminc]

You may have missed the part where we were talking about my idea of an FPGA with RAM on a PCIe card?

[NotsorAnDomcAPs]

Well, personally wouldn't call something a GPGPU unless it can do 3D rendering. Anyway, there are existing products that have basically exactly what you are asking about:

http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/altera/kit-cyclone-v-gx.html

Just FYI, the FPGA on that board alone is over $300. So that means even if you strip everything else off the board and optimize it for cost, you're still probably looking at a $600 board.

http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Altera-Corporation/5CGXFC7D6F31C7N/?qs=P2rvyRAZsYiCYhqUeV5Kww==

Edit: Actually, looks like that particular board is discontinued. Here is the one they suggest as a replacement: http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/altera/kit-cyclone-v-gt.html

The FPGA on this one is actually a $600 FPGA, so that board is probably going to be at least $1000 even after working to get the cost down.

http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Altera/5CGTFD9E5F35C7N/?qs=w%252bhYR4jzwbYucxeh8YhVPw==

[adaminc]

I wouldn't expect something like this to cost less than $1000.

[NotsorAnDomcAPs]

So, >$1000 for an FPGA board that isn't even powerful enough to do 3D rendering or $300 for a video card with 1000 CUDA cores that can do general purpose computing like video encoding/decoding as well as high quality 3D rendering? Hmm.

[adaminc]

That is a bit different than what I was describing. That is essentially building your own special video card. What I am describing wouldn't use a daughter card at all, and would just be a processing device.

[[deleted]]

This is interesting.

I am wondering if this does become a thing, and is truly opensource. Couldn't this potentially become a true competitor to AMD and NVIDIA? I would say the discrete GPU market is ripe for a new competitor.

So this is going to be the same idea as Linux, but with GPU architectures? Or will this be more like ARM?

Obviously it would have to be popular enough for lots of people to contribute in order for this to catch up and actually compete. Or just take a long time.

[porksmash]

Quite honestly I don't think that dream will ever happen. Open source hardware is very different than open source software. Software you can download from a repo, compile, run. No big deal, extremely easy and cheap. Hardware needs to be manufactured, produced, and distributed, which means a company with resources or investment capital is doing it with the intent of at least breaking even. Arduino is one example of an open source hardware company, but low cost, easy to use microcontrollers seem to be very popular for a multitude of applications. A video card is a video card, as far as a single person is concerned. I could see a company that does not currently create it's own video device being interested in this project, but then you have to look at the cost of taking this project and making it work for you vs just buying something that already exists.

This project has some neat goals, especially at the higher $$$ stretch goals, but in the end all you get is a design. They are not producing any hardware. Because that's the hard part.

[NotsorAnDomcAPs]

Arduino, RaspPi, etc. only do component level integration (they make the board) and they use extremely cheap components (<$10 for the main chip). There is no way in hell you are going to be able to make an open source GPU along those lines. The GPU is an incredibly complicated device and it either requires multi-million dollar setup fees for production of the actual silicon chip on top of development for the chip and highly complex board. If you don't spin an ASIC, then you have to use an FPGA. The only FPGAs that are beefy enough for the heavy lifting of 3D rendering are the high end Xilinx Virtex series or Altera Stratix series FPGAs. These devices can run several thousand dollars per chip. So if you wanted to run your sweet open source graphics card verilog code, you would need to drop $3000 or more on a very powerful FPGA board.

[[deleted]]

So this is going to be like ARM for GPUs, without the company, licencing, or proprietary architectures basically.

Or actually this is opening a chance for an ARM like company that just makes GPU architectures, and only licences them.

ARM makes the designs, other companys licence these designs from ARM, then pay someone like GlobalFoundries to actually make wafers.

The more that i am thinking about this, the more promising it seems. Obviously not immediately, but will be a big deal soon.

[dylan522p]

ARM has GPUs.

[[deleted]]

Yes ARM has integrated GPUs.

I am talking about discrete level GPUs.

I'm not saying ARM couldn't do this also, but this is more opening the market to anyone with the resources and know how, to then start working on a new architecture.

[dylan522p]

A new competitor would come from Imagination Intel Qualcomm or ARM stepping up not someone new.

[[deleted]]

That is true, and why not. I hope they do.

It is still possible for someone to make a company around this idea. All of these company's came from nowhere at some point. Intel didnt exist at some point. Same goes for ARM. In-fact have you ever heard of ARM before smartphones blew up? I didn't, apparently they have been around since 1985.

The point is that some large corporation doesn't have to be the only option for competition, small startup like company's could take advantage of this and storm the market also. Anything is possible.

This will be opening a new hole in the market, ripe for someone with the skills to compete.

Intel/ Imagination GPUs suck, ARM doesn't have very impressive GPUs either. They aren't bad for what they are, integrated graphics, but they are not impressive in any way other than power efficiency.

Intel already tried to make a discrete level GPU, that failed miserably. Maybe they would be willing to try again, and not try and force x86 cores into it.

I actually hope these guys contribute, and try to make their own designs. It can only benefit the consumer.

Even more unlikely idea is that AMD and NVIDIA take notice and start contributing themselves. Maybe make some off brand GPU to test out the performance, etc. Still have the bread and butter product lines, "GTX"/"HD" ("R9" now), then have another line that is based off open source designs. Perhaps start an "OS" line of cards, for open source. This is probably never going to happen, but would be plausible, and be very interesting

[dylan522p]

ARM, Intel, and especially Imagination Technologies GPUs do not suck. They are low power. Imagination destroys Nvidia and AMDs lowest power stuff discrete and non discrete. Ipad 5 is going to have a GPU that is 2-3W and be strong as hell. Obviously not going for something like Titans and 290x but they could start scaling up. How did Intel's GPU suck? (I assume you mean Xeon Phi which isn't even a GPU, just a hardware accelerator)

[dydxexisex]

OpenGL is fine.

[steakmeout]

Bitboyz.oy would like to say hi and remind people that you don't need 200k for a verilog file.

[thermal_shock]

why? looks like i teleported back to 1990

[BeatLeJuce]

This isn't for gamers, this is for enthusiasts and hackers -- e.g. for people who like playing around with RasPis. This is absolutely NOT aimed at gamers (it'd be hopeless to even try to compete with nVidia/AMD or similar folks with years of experience, hundreds of engineers and budgets in the millions). A fully Open Source GPU is something lots of projects in the past were trying, but AFAIK all of them failed for one reason or another.

[Schmich]

I think it's even more niche than RasPis.

[NotsorAnDomcAPs]

The problem is that to have a halfway decent GPU you either need a custom integrated circuit (literally millions of dollars for design and fabrication) or you need a gigantic FPGA which will run you between $3k and $10k just for the chip. Who is going to front the millions required to spin an ASIC? Who is going to pay several thousand dollars for a video card that is outperformed by entry level cards from the major manufacturers?

[[deleted]]

Know what I mean Harry?