Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 29 Jan 2004 16:36:35 -0500 | From | Timothy Miller <> | Subject | Re: [OT] Crazy idea: Design open-source graphics chip |
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John Bradford wrote:
> > If we put 4 or more on each board, it could be useful for betting > shops, stock markets, shop window displays, and other applications > where you need to control a dozen or more screens, which basically > contain textual information, but where 80x25 text mode just isn't > enough. I.E. you might want the odd pie chart or different sized text > or something.
The market for secondary heads is too small. You can get an ATI Mach 64 PCI card for pennies and add it as a second head for what you're describing.
For an open-source graphics card to be marketable, it would have to be attractive as a primary head used in Linux workstations and servers, and it would have to be so in a PC market.
> > >>Oh, there's one thing I forgot. It would have to support VGA. > > > Maybe not, the primary market for this, (I.E. what makes it cost > effective to produce, and therefore available for developers to use as > their primary display), could be users who want to control many > displays, and who would have a standard VGA card for the primary > monitor. (Yeah, it would be kind of ironic if 99% of our amasing new > graphics cards ended up in mahines with another card as the primary > display, but then again, if it makes the open hardware available for > developers to experiment with at a reasonable cost, it would be worth > doing).
The irony is too much. Seriously.
> > So, what about a PCI card with four or eight 16MB framebuffers, and > the basic acceleration and other specs you described above. Is that > at least slightly feasible, do you think?
Adding extra heads is relatively easy, and you can keep the memory unified and do it all in one chip.
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