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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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