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    SubjectRe: [OT] Crazy idea: Design open-source graphics chip
    > The real question we have to ask ourselves is, what would be the market 
    > demand for a graphics card that is 3 generations behind the state of the
    > art and over-priced, the only advantage being that it's a 100% open
    > architecture?

    Err, well there are always the server and embedded markets, if the
    device was cheap enough.

    > I don't have $100k to have it fabricated, so we have to goad some
    > company into doing it for us, and given the volumes, they'll have to
    > charge way more than it's worth if you compare its capabilities against
    > ATI et al.
    >
    > I've got some great ideas for how to do this chip, but they're frankly
    > nothing revolutionary. The obvious test bed is an FPGA. That imposes
    > serious limitations on what kind of logic utilization and performance we
    > can get. The ASIC version can be clocked faster, but we dare not put in
    > untested logic. (And we can't afford the tools necessary to do the
    > proper simulation.)

    WHAT!? You are making the project out to be several orders of
    magnitude more difficult and expensive than it is.

    Did you know that you can generate a 625-line TV signal with little
    more hardware than a Z80 CPU? Some 8-bits actually did that.

    > So, the big question: How many units a year would be sold for an
    > underpowered, over-priced graphics card that just happens to be 100%
    > open and 100% supported?

    Quite a few. Think of the TV-connected embedded appliance market, for
    example. Displaying a static menu of choices isn't exactly very
    demanding.

    John.
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