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  • The GPLv3 GPU Is Now Available

    Phoronix: The GPLv3 GPU Is Now Available

    The GPLGPU is now available, a GPLv3-licensed Verilog design for a 2D/3D graphics engine...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Hope to see one soon on my PCI bus

    Originally posted by phoronix View Post
    Phoronix: The GPLv3 GPU Is Now Available

    The GPLGPU is now available, a GPLv3-licensed Verilog design for a 2D/3D graphics engine...

    http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTc1NDY
    If the price is right I want one.

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    • #3
      Originally posted by fithisux View Post
      If the price is right I want one.
      Have you actually looked at what you'd be getting for your money? Basically, it's an exercise in FPGA programming... educational, but with little real-world value. As far as I can tell from the article and linked blog, there's no hardware (simulator only for now), no drivers, and the whole thing is equivalent to first-generation GPU designs from the late 90's.

      It's great if you're into FPGAs and circuit design... but it's not an open-source competitor to modern hardware, and is never likely to be.

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      • #4
        Outside of GPL purists it's DOA.

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        • #5
          If Michael can get a sample (when a chip sample is made from the Verilog design) and test it then that would be a good thing as we can see how well this initial design would perform.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by DeepDayze View Post
            If Michael can get a sample (when a chip sample is made from the Verilog design) and test it then that would be a good thing as we can see how well this initial design would perform.
            Making chips is very expensive - it is possible that nobody will ever fabricate a physical implementation of this design. That is the real problem of open source hardware. If you could just download CPU/GPU designs and use them like we can with ordinary software, then there would have been successful open source designs a decade ago.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by rrohbeck
              Given that I'm not a gamer but a workstation/server user, this would be *very* interesting if it led to very good Linux support and maybe features like IPMI-like capabilities. The GPU power of my 7850 is way overkill, I only bought it for its 4 screen capability and to play around with OpenCL one day.
              Just curious but why didn't you just buy 2 cheap GPUs? In linux, you don't even need each GPU to be related - you can still get hardware acceleration for each screen attached, as long as you have the proper drivers for the GPU housing the display port. If you dual boot with Windows, you could safely get an APU and a 2nd GPU that is hybrid crossfire compatible. If you disable crossfire, you can use both the IGP and the discrete GPU to handle up to 6 displays. Not bad considering both products would cost you less than a single 7850.


              Anyway more on topic, I think this GPU would be great for educational purposes but I don't see the real value of it at all. When is a fully GPL compatible GPU ever a requirement?

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              • #8
                Originally posted by DeepDayze View Post
                If Michael can get a sample (when a chip sample is made from the Verilog design) and test it then that would be a good thing as we can see how well this initial design would perform.
                Not very well, because it doesn't have drivers either, so someone needs to spend some time writing those. And then when you have both hardware and drivers, you'll most likely find that it can't actually run any modern benchmark, because it's a simple design that *might* be comparable to a first-generation GeForce card from 1999...

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by chrisb View Post
                  Making chips is very expensive - it is possible that nobody will ever fabricate a physical implementation of this design. That is the real problem of open source hardware. If you could just download CPU/GPU designs and use them like we can with ordinary software, then there would have been successful open source designs a decade ago.
                  Making chips is cheap...making small, energy-efficient, powerful chips is expensive.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Marc Driftmeyer View Post
                    Outside of GPL purists it's DOA.
                    Outside of GPL purists - everything is a mess.

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