[Cialug] First free graphic adapter?

[David Champion]

This was also posted on slashdot last night. I agree with several of the 
  people who replied on that... that Matrox already has open source 
drivers, and this card, as stated below, will have pretty poor 3D 
performance compared to even the Matrox cards, which are about half the 
speed of the current offerings by ATI & nVidia.

Also, this isn't truly a "free" design. They're releasing the driver 
specs, and even the board design, but not the chip itself. They "might" 
release the chip, after the product is dead. I'm sure RMS wouldn't call 
that "free".

So who would buy these? A few hard core open source people... but 
probably not enough to support the product.

-dc

Renegade Muskrat wrote:

> The text below was originally posted to LKML by Timothy Miller <miller 
> at techsource.com>. I got it after it was forwarded to misc@openbsd.org. 
> It describes the potential for the construction of a new graphics 
> adapter which is designed to be completely open, so there will be no 
> problems with drivers on open source operating systems. I think it is a 
> great idea, so i thought i'd forward it on since Mr. Miller wants 
> feedback. If you have answers to his specific questions, it would 
> probably make more sense to send them to Timothy Miller rather than back 
> to me. His address was given in the first sentence of this message.
> 
> Here's the post :
> 
> 
> 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.
>                                                -- Dan
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>             "I'm still sane on three planets and two moons."
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>       Daniel Ramaley                  3118 Cottage Grove Ave Apt 8
>       dramaley at spatulacity dot cx        Des Moines, Iowa 50311
>       http://www.spatulacity.cx/                    (515) 271-5233
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