[geeks] OpenGraphics

[Joshua Boyd]

On Jan 1, 2008, at 3:53 PM, Shannon Hendrix wrote:

>
> Possibly, I can see it now.

As I said, I posted on the mailing list about the server problem.

Turns out that the server dies the first of every month.  Ick.

> I still don't see much value here, unless they support PCIe.
>
> I think this problem is a lot harder than people realize.

At the time they started, virtually nobody had PCIe.  My  
understanding is they chose PCI-X with the idea that PCI-X would be  
easier to transition to PCIe than AGP would be.

Also, their PCI-X card will function in a regular PCI slot.

On the upside, there are PCI-X to PCIe bridge chips, so someone could  
re-spin the board with one of those added.  I think the official view  
is that doing so at this moment would distract momentum from getting  
the current generation done.  I'm not sure that for the first  
generation PCI-X is going to be a large impediment since the card  
will be very expensive anyway.  I believe the price is slated to be  
closer to $1000 than $500.

BTW, the main people involved do this professionally.  Some of them  
are working on the side, and at least one quit his job at a different  
video card design company to do this.  They obviously know that they  
will never be able to compete on price or speed with ATI or NVidia.   
But then, the former employer also couldn't compete on those terms  
either.

I believe the former employer is http://www.techsource.com/.  Among  
other things, that company made the Raptor cards one could stick in  
various Sun machines.

Also BTW, some mention has been made of parties interested in  
licensing the IP for embedded or scientific designs.

Architecturally, the 3D design seems to be reminiscent of the Nvidia  
Riva lines or the ATI rage, except cleaner (at least than the rage)  
and without the texturing limitations.  Basically, like the old  
cards, the actual 3D transformation needs to be done on the host  
CPU.  The video card just take care of drawing textured 2d  
triangles.  In this case we have a much higher fill rate, 256MB of  
texture RAM, and the ability to drive two 30" LCD panels.  It should  
be a really good card for running a modern compositing linux  
desktop.  If it were done today, probably the only card that could  
come close at the intended usage would be the Radeon X850, and those  
can't drive dual 30" displays.  Of course, by the time it actually is  
done, the free drivers for newer ATI cards may finally have caught up.

I'm mistaken, it is PCI 66/64, not actually PCI-X.  I need to run, so  
I'm not correcting that mistake above.