Kickstarter For Open Source GPU 108
First time accepted submitter eekee writes "The targets are high, but so is the goal: releasing Verilog source code for a GPU implementation. The source will be open source, LGPL-licensed, and suitable for loading onto an FPGA. The first target is for a 2D GPU with PCI interface; perhaps not terribly interesting in itself, but the first stretch goal is much more exciting: full OpenGL and Direct3D graphics."
Unlike the Open Graphics Project, this is starting from a working 2D accelerator and mostly working 3D accelerator cloning the features of the Number Nine Ticket to Ride hardware. If they get a meelion bucks they'll overhaul the chip to support something other than PCI (although you can bridge between PCI and PCIe) and implement a modern programmable rather than fixed-function chip. Also unlike OGP, they do not appear interested in producing hardware, instead focusing entirely on the core itself for use in FPGAs (anyone want to dust off the OGD1 design?)
Re:Dubious Market? (Score:3, Informative)
The point of this is NOT to produce a graphics card you'll stick in your PC. The card they're emulating was released in 1998. It's for embedded system designers to add graphics capabilities to a project that's already using an FPGA without completely reinventing the wheel. Speaking as someone who implemented a (very basic) 3D GPU for a class project once, it is quite a lot of work.
Re:utterly utterly worthless (Score:2, Informative)
These guys have licenses covering the original #9 tech that was sold to S3.
The are former #9 engineers, not as you say non-too-bright fiddlers.
"By mid 2000, S3 had completed the acquisition of Number Nine's assets and Number Nine had ceased operations. In 2002, two former Number Nine engineers, James Macleod and Francis Bruno, formed Silicon Spectrum, Inc., and licensed Number Nine's graphics technology from S3 to implement in FPGA devices."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_Nine_Visual_Technology#Number_Nine_Video_Cards_using_Number_Nine_GPUs
"Rather than trying to start from scratch, Silicon Spectrum licensed the same graphics technology that we had developed for Number Nine and optimized it for use in an FPGA. During that same period, both Altera and Xilinx introduced cost effective low priced FPGA chips which we could fit our design into which turned a former high end PC graphics accelerator into a lower cost solution."
http://www.siliconspectrum.com/overview.htm