The Open Graphics Project

The Open Graphics Project (OGP) is developing graphics cards with Free-licensed specifications and Free Software drivers.


We believe you have the right to own your computer and get the graphics you deserve. You paid for it. You should be free to innovate and to run the system you choose.

Currently your graphics are often restricted. Unless you are bigger than Dell they are uninterested in what you want to do. You are enslaved to their bugs and restrictions. Yet these restrictions are what a company in another part of the world arbitrarily chose to apply to you. Want to change the world? You will need permission first.


The Open Graphics Project believes innovation and freedom is important.


We believe your freedoms' include the right to own your computer and we welcome innovation. We have a reliable card with open specifications that you can tinker with. You can read our bios and change it. You can experiment with a working hardware design. The Drivers are open. Yes, we invite you to help improve them. You can alter them to suit your needs. Want to help us change the world? We are changing it now...

• Frequently Asked Questions
  

Announcements and News

5 August 2010 Announcement: We'd like to thank Lattice Semiconductor for donating a programming cable!

3 August 2010 Announcement: All boards power tested on the bench and all are within spec!

15 July 2010 Announcement: The OGD1's have arrived in Portland just before OSCON

23 June 2010 Announcement: Read about the project status at OSNews!

1 June 2010 Announcement: Call for Developers announced at Open Source Bridge!

17 May 2010 Announcement: The boards are built and await programming!

30 April 2010 Announcement: Waiting for a slot on the production schedule.

1 February 2010 Announcement: Components sourcing is complete and production will begin shortly.

13 November 2009 Announcement: The PCB's have arrived and remaining components sourcing is underway.

2 November 2009 Announcement: The PCB's are on order and should arrive next week!

21 April 2009 Announcement: VGA emulation is working! As part of a complete graphics solution, we need to support VGA text mode. This way, OGD1 can be plugged into an x86 PC and used as the boot console. Today, we achieved that. There is still testing and some minor tweaks that remain, but it's functional. Shortly, We'll check everything into our SVN and make a tarball release. Duskglow's administrator was kind enough to put our video on YouTube. This is just a webcam recording of the display, driven by OGD1, booting Gentoo. (We'll put up a higher-res video later.) For the record, this was not an easy feat. VGA is quite convoluted, and emulating it with a minimum of hardware made it all the more difficult. Kudos to the developers. (OSNews article) (Explanation of how we implemented VGA)

9 April 2009 Announcement: The Free Software Foundation has put out a call to assist us in cleaning up the OGP web site. In addition to helping us emphasize our dedication to Free Software values (over mere open source development), they also want to help us clean up the appearance and organization. We have a lot of useful documentation, news items, educational materials, and other things buried in our wiki that need to be identified and placed in a structure that's attractive and easy to navigate. In general, we just need a good overhaul. Check out the blog posting on the FSF web site. We're hoping the publicity that comes along with their help will attract more attention to our project, assisting us in our mission to bring Free-Software-Friendly hardware to Free Software developer and user communities.

7 April 2009 Announcement: The Open Graphics Project is making the OGD1 schematics and artwork available under the TAPR Open Hardware License. Those materials will continue to be licensed under GPL and also commercially from Traversal Technology. Indication of that license in those materials will be added gradually; if you need a legal statement (besides this one) earlier than that, email Traversal Technology. FPGA logic blocks will continue to be licensed under GPL and commercially from Traversal, but we don't object to having TAPR added to those as well if there is demand and justification.

(Edit to clarify how this works: If you acquire these materials directly from Traversal or the OGP, then you get to choose which license you want: GPL, TAPR OHL, or pay money for a commercial license. If you produce a derivative work, you may choose to contribute those changes back to the OGP, in which case all three licenses continue to apply. If you choose NOT to contribute your changes back to the OGP, then your derivative work is stuck in whichever license you decided on when you created your derivative work.)

30 March 2009 Announcement: The Open Graphics Project has partnered with Linux Fund to raise money to build ten OGD1's that will be given to open source developers for driver and application development. By pooling resources, Traversal Technology will be able to fill its pre-orders and make additional boards available for purchase at a reduced price of $750!

Please consider making a donation!

10 January 2009 Announcement: the MIPS-like microcontroller developed for VGA emulation is now running on OGD1. We've had OGD1 working as an unaccelerated non-VGA framebuffer device working for some time now, but now we have the controller running on real hardware.

7 July 2008 Announcement: The Non Profit Open Hardware Foundation is now accepting donations. Donations allow the OHF to support open hardware projects, free software, and open source causes and the Foundation's initial focus is to facilitate production of the OGD1 hardware prototype card. Yes, your donations can help assist our OGP graphic card developers to purchase and develop on an ODG1 development board. There is a bright yellow donate button on the OHF homepage. If you want to help toward building an open graphics card please use it frequently. :)

21 May 2008 Announcement: OGD1 is ready for pre-orders. The first 100 pre-orders get a $100 discount and free accessories (programming cable that retails for $65).

• The order page: http://www.traversaltech.com/store.phtml
  
• The Traversal Technology FAQ: http://www.traversaltech.com/ogd1p_faq2.phtml
  
• The product info page: http://www.traversaltech.com/products.phtml
  

This board is for Hardware developers. As soon as enough boards have been ordered, production will start and coding will move even faster with developers working on their own development boards. We looked far and wide for a suitable board, and in the end we had to make our own. This board was designed to have enough outputs so that it can be used for other projects as well.

If you want to promote Open Graphics, you can donate to the Open Hardware Foundation, because they will sponsor discounts on this board for serious Open Graphics developers.

Artwork Released
A major defining moment of the Open Graphics Project is rapidly approaching: The final schematic and bill-of-materials for OGD1 are finally out, and the artwork is in progress.

You can find the schematic and BoM here:

• Schematic
  
• Bill of Materials
  

Documentation progress, Learning HDL, Keeping an eye on the competition and more...
Open Graphics Newsletter OGPN25

• About OGP explains who we are and what we do.
  
• Newsletters
  
• Press about the project
  

OGP Development

• OGD1 the Open Graphics Development board, series 1 the Current Open Graphics Card Under Development
  
• OGD1 Components Guide
  
• OGC1 Future Graphics Card Feature List
  
• Documentation contains requirements, specification, and other project documentation.
  
• VGA Code Sprint to finish VGA
  
• Ideas for projects.
  
• Building the images for the FPGA and CPLD
  

Verilog Lessons - By Tim

• Introduction to Verilog
  
• Verilog Lesson 1 - Signals
  
• Verilog Lesson 2 - Arithmetic/Logic Operators
  
• Verilog Lesson 3 - Combinatorial logic expressed behaviorally
  
• Verilog Lesson 4 - Sequential Logic
  

Community Resources

• Mailing List (SVN Commit) (Announcements)
  
• Contributing to OGP
  
• Development Tools (subversion, HDL tools, etc)
  
• HDL Resources (logical circuits, Verilog, etc)
  
• To check out the subversion tree, use this command:

  svn co svn://svn.opengraphics.org/ogp

  (Important: Subversion Commit Policy )
  

• The Open Graphics Project
  
  • Announcements and News
    
  • OGP Development
    
  • Verilog Lessons - By Tim
    
  • Community Resources
    

VGA emulation is working
OGD1, booting Gentoo

Verilog Lessons- by Tim

[+]

• Introduction to Verilog
  
• - Verilog Lesson 1 - Signals
  
• - Verilog Lesson 2 - Arithmetic/Logic Operators
  
• - Verilog Lesson 3 - Combinatorial logic expressed behaviorally
  
• - Verilog Lesson 4 - Sequential Logic