It Looks Like The Open-Source GPU Will Fail Again

It looks like the latest attempt at producing an open-source graphics processor down to the hardware level -- an open-source FPGA GPU design -- will fail and not come to fruition with its targeted Kickstarter campaign.

After originally relaying a company's open-source GPU ideas this past summer, the company came forward last month with plans for generating one million dollars for a shader-based LGPLv3 GPU. Three weeks ago, the open-source GPU launched on Kickstarter.

The base goal of the Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign is to get $200,000 to have the complete Verilog implementation of a 2D/3D graphics processor that was designed by Silicon Spectrum. The company is now winding down and looking to open-source their designs while raising some funds for possible improvements.

Contributing the campaign doesn't get you a graphics card, but rather backers would need to use the supplied data to program their own FPGA. Three weeks later into the $200,000 minimum goal but ambitions for one million dollars, only $12,148 USD has been raised as of writing this article. The twelve thousand comes from just 356 backers. Even though this campaign has been covered multiple times on Phoronix and also mentioned on other popular news outlets, it really isn't a big hit.

To no real surprise, this Kickstarter campaign is destined for failure. The open-source graphics card failed after multiple attempts in the past, and the fully open-source computer campaign was also a flop.