Newsletter Archives

June 3rd 2006 Open Graphics Project Newsletter

• June 3rd 2006 Open Graphics Project Newsletter
• ANNOUNCEMENTS
  • OGD1 Artwork Revision 1
  • The Start of Coding
  • C++ Simulation of the OGA series cards committed to OGP
  • OGP Website
• OGP Alternative Usages: the wild, the crazy and the interesting
• Progress and developments
  • Web Presence
    • OGP Wiki
    • OGP Website
  • Donations
  • Drivers
• OGA Architecture
  • Shaders
  • Licensing and Competitors
• OGD Architecture
  • OGD competition
  • Using OGD1 in other projects
• Who is Who..
  • Quote from the list:
• OGP in the News
  • Mini FAQ for the Open Graphics Mailing list.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

OGD1 Artwork Revision 1

The first revision of the OGD1 PCB artwork: has been posted. This is a significant step. While this is being reviewed over the next two months, as soon as the artwork is finished the board can be sent for the first prototypes to be made. This has been included in the wiki page and includes a composite image of the board artwork by Terry Hancock, showing how the board will look.

• http://wiki.duskglow.com/tiki-index.php?page=OGD1

The Start of Coding

Timothy started off the coding for OGD1, the development and testing board suggesting that he "...lead small projects on the list so that we can start moving forward with the Verilog development. ... If I define protocols and interfaces, others will be willing to help code and debug. So... if I were to spec out an SPI PROM interface, would anyone be interested in working on it with me? I picked this because it's small and simple. Here's the spec sheet: http://www.sst.com/downloads/datasheet/S71242.pdf"

One poster pointed out: "Admittedly Timothy could do it quickly and easily. But letting us use it to learn on... Not often do you get chances to work on a project like this, with the management of an experienced project lead and with the help of some experienced guys. For those considering using this to learn, think about this.. you will be able to say to an employer you have real experience with a real project (Of course not overlooking the experienced ones reading the list who are willing to help with advice and code). And if you qualify for a developers OGD1 - it is a card with bandwidth and a big fpga that you can do very interesting stuff with. "

For those interested see: http://wiki.duskglow.com/tiki-index.php?page=Contributing+Code

Shortly afterwards Petter.Urkedal was congratulated as the very first community contributor of RTL code to the Open Graphics Project. The Project is just starting with coding and more organization is being done, but congratulations to OGD and Petter for such a significant milestone. Feel free to join in and help out.

C++ Simulation of the OGA series cards committed to OGP

• https://svn.suug.ch/repos/opengraphics/main/trunk/new_model/

Timothy Miller announced, "When we were spec'ing out the design while it was a Tech Source project, I developed a C++ program to embody the functionality that people had asked for. It's like documentation you can compile. When Tech Source dropped it, Andy and I looked through documentation we'd written, list posts, etc., and developed a new one from scratch so as to avoid any IP issues with Tech Source."

OGP Website

Andy Fong said, "We are in the process of transferring the dns registration of opengraphics.org. (...) After the transfer is finished, we will point it back to
http://wiki.duskglow.com/tiki-index.php?page=Open-Graphics" .

The work was quickly completed and Bart van Leeuwen noted, "the domain has been transferred to the project."

Andy Fong summarised what had occurred, saying, "Traversal Technology took over the domain on 5/21 but we still point it back to Russel's wiki page on duskglow. We would like opengraphics.org to be driven by the community but if there is need for webspace and other resources, we will try to support the community as much as we can. Russel has been very generous in providing the space for the wiki and mail list and has done excellent job in maintaining them."

OGP Alternative Usages: the wild, the crazy and the interesting

Related to medical equipment usage, Troy had some thoughts: " if one had a system that could be fully formally verified, from the hardware on up, that would be the perfect open-source business model. For the 1% of the market that cares about verification, you have a lock on the market. For the 99% that doesn't care about verification, you get all those people testing your stuff and giving you new ideas and code you can work into the next verified release."

Progress and developments

Troy asked, "Can I buy any sort of FPGA-based hardware with pci (or ideally pci-express) and a DVI port that at least has a framebuffer driver and mode switching? (Oh, and is (...) passively cooled) ? How long do I have to wait before I can buy an OGA development board that has a minimal working driver set? "

Timothy explained the current schedule based upon using the OGD1 development card: "Well, the hardware release won't come initially with all of the logic bits. As they're developed, they'll be made available. The first thing we'll get that's workable is a dumb framebuffer design which we can incrementally build on. It'll be like $600 for OGP developers, which is expensive for a graphics card. OGD1 hardware is most likely to be out in August or September, right in time for ispLever starter to support it."

Web Presence

OGP Wiki

Russell Miller said, "The wiki is provided as a public service to the open-graphics project,which I fully support and have been providing both the wiki and this mailing list for quite a long time," and Timothy added, "The OGP is an open organization (if it's organized to be called that), and I'm just one of the many participants." He then gave the go ahead for interested project members to " discuss what changes to the organization they want to make and make them (within the bounds of what Russel allows)."

One poster suggested that, given "... a dual license [for the wiki], or in some way permit Traversal to use it, when the time comes to make a manual, Traversal only need to proof it, print and ship it and possible even sell it. Whereas if you don't have dual copyright, then you will need to completely re-write all their documentation. While we need to protect the documentation, we want to help Traversal generate funds which means more graphics boards for us."

Mark replied, " When a person creates a user account on the wiki, we can have them agree to

• license everything they submit under the GFDL and
• transfer copyright of everything they submit to Traversal Technology.

We can use the agreement that Xara Xtreme (the SVG graphics program) asks its contributors to sign: http://www.xaraxtreme.org/images/pdf/16-01-06/contributor_agreement.pdf
We can also use a variation of this agreement when people submit code."

It was suggested that contributors might need to mail a hard copy of their agreement, and one poster asked, "is there any way we can make it easier to contribute?"

Timothy replied, "If I hand out code and I have my own license notice on it, and someone contributes to it, they're implicitly agreeing to it [for the wiki] we should just have a licensing and contributions page. we should just have a licensing and contributions page."

The current wiki was considered inadequate for this task and replacing it was investigated. However, one person requested that "perhaps, for now, can those who add to the wiki please add a page for yourself with some information here [the ProjectMembers page]."

Until we get fully sorted, we probably want have some sort of text that we request wiki contributors add to your page.

After receiving quite a few suggestions the wiki, has been given some loving attention. There are several jobs yet to be done so if you are willing to help out, post to the mailing list. Visitors reading the wiki are invited to offer their comments via the mailing list for improving the wiki.

OGP Website

Loureens announced that, "it seems that we really need that web site. ... I've just installed Drupal ... and I'll see what I can make of it in the coming days. I'll post a link when I have something to show you."

He was good on his word as shortly afterwards he said, "I've ... polished the open window logo a bit more: http://nova.student.utwente.nl/~lourens/gfx/opengraphics/ogp_logo_1_fullcolour.png
That's a rather large version, move away from your monitor a little for the full effect. ... and you can watch me tinker at http://nova.student.utwente.nl/opengraphics/"

A number posted their approval of the work done so far. We look forward to watching it grow.

Donations

Creating a foundation called The Open Graphics Foundation in part to accept donations was raised and much has yet to be decided But in the future this entity will accept donations. This is an important part of OGP. And it will play a big part in helping OGP developers.

Hardware is different to software in that a software developer only needs talent, a computer and time (yes oversimplifying but bear with me). Hardware needs developers as well, but what it also needs is dollars. With some of our designs we are admittedly looking at some large numbers.

The open source community has in the past asked how they can contribute to the project. But, seeing that Traversal's goal is to make enough money to fund the very high expenses involved in making more boards, and pay a modest wage to it's workers - the company would prefer to have a measure of independence between its finances and the donations from the community. Traversal is already planning to assist by offering the development boards at a significant discount to OGP developers, but there is a limit to the discount it can give - remember its goal is to afford making new boards. Because the boards cost so much to make, it cannot afford to start giving them away. The Open Graphics Foundation, appears to provide a modest solution here. Your donations can directly benefit the project's developers and indirectly Traversal. One job of the foundation is to account for donations from the community and use these funds to assist proven OGP contributors who cant afford a development board.

What does this mean for you and me? If we are a proven contributor to OGP but cant afford the $600 for the OGD1 development board, we could apply to the foundation. They will likely ask how much can we afford and then how much assistance we are offered will often depend on how much money is in the kitty. Hopefully this will enable more developers to get development boards. Of course, if you can afford a board, by all means let the donations be used for those who have less, and if some of us decide to donate small but regular amounts (we wont stop you donating larger amounts) to this fund, they will be able to help even more of us. . As more is decided, it will be covered in the newsletters

Drivers

John asked whether anyone had "modified the X server to run on a dumb frame buffer where the only access functions are Set/Get Pixel?"

Timothy replied, "I have that experience. If you look at xc/programs/Xserver/mi/, you'll find that the minimal hooks it wants are setspans, getspans, fillspans, and (I think) push pixels. I think it may also be able to take advantage of polypoint. I've never set up a server using only mi, but it probably isn't too hard."

OGA Architecture

OGA is a series of graphics cards for the embedded market.

Timothy explained that "OGA is both a subset and superset of OpenGL. Really, it's just a bunch of generic graphics math. In one sense, you could say that I put together a design that was very general for both 2D and 3D and then rearranged it a bit to conform to OpenGL. That doesn't mean I locked it down into something too restrictive or something. It would be senseless to intentionally incompatible with OpenGL if it's trivial to make it conform without causing any harm. ... Gate count is a question we'll be able to answer in the not too distant future."

szefirov noted one potential drawback of documenting the hardware and staying locked: "...by locking the interface, and very specific interface like instruction set architecture, Intel locked itself (and its followers) into the trap. They now need to spend energy twice - first for innovation and second for soldering innovation and legacy. By changing inteface to better suit the implementation (as RISC designers did) you reduce energy spent to develop something new. By locking inteface you lock out a good part of you total energy. That's why none of the AIT and NVidia will open their intefaces or agree on open one."

Timothy acknowledged this and explained how OGP would not fall into the same trap. "In my opinion, the holy grail right now would be an instruction set that is based on profiling of thousands of existing applications, taking the top few percent of instructions and filling in the rest for completeness. (Since the apps would be biased by the architectures they were compiled for, this would have to be an iterative process.) Then different underlying architectures could be designed around this more abstract ISA. It would certainly be easier to translate than x86. But this is not for OGP yet as he then explained: in a future OGA design, we will probably want to have programmable shaders, and we'll be doing this kind of profiling and iterative design."

Shaders

After the last discussions about shaders and the future OGA graphic card series Ray said: "I was under the impression that the recent discussions about a shader were done with the intent of including one on the chip."

Timothy clarified the situation. "the programmable shader discussion was forward-looking, hypothetical, and something that's to be experimented with on a small scale with the FPGA. ... OGA is a 'fixed-function fragment shader' ... That means it's not programmable. That means it's quite minimal."

Szefirov offered help with very high-level simulation of hardware in Haskell. He then explained that "With Haskell you can simulate very high level properties of architectures much faster than with System C++. After initial turnaround of simulations and agreeing on some architecture we could use SystemC. "

As the project continues to progress some simulation will be tried and this will receive further attention.

Licensing and Competitors

A question was raised about just how open would the design be. Timothy helped by explaining the balancing act for Hardware design. "Without putting GPL on the RTL, I can't get enough community support, but many people who would buy our products would shy away from them on the grounds that someone may legally copy our design and put us out of business. A vendor needs staying power, and it's hard for them to have that when they "give away" every detail."

One discussion moved to the possibility of an OGP having competition with itself, in that the product might be built by others. Timothy said, "Second sourcing is fine for the customer. But if it puts the designers out of business, you only get one chip. Who's going to design the next one?"

One poster replied, "One point of difference is you have the code as a dual license. Competitors will only have access to GPL code. Because your company has built trust, only you will be able to offer the dual license."

Timothy agreed, " Only Traversal has full rights. And there may be a substantive market for the IP for this thing."

Jack pointed out that "the OGD1 design will be fully published right off the bat. It's the TRV10 ASIC that will have some portions of its internal design kept private for some period of time necessary to meet Traversal's essential business needs."

Hamish summed up a how a few were feeling when he said, " Keeping the internal design private for 'a while' is (IMO) fine... As long as the interface is open & well known (And in order to be (compatible) with OGD it has to be) and does what it says, I can't think of any objections off hand...Just like a CPU (probably my favourite analogy)... AMD & VIA create new x86 CPU's without problem (Admittedly Intel would probably rather they didn't), but this is good... Imagine what we'd be stuck with from Intel CPU division if they didn't have competition like that..."

This discussion was furthered when Timothy explained his view. "I'm a GPL zealot and have always intended to release the whole thing under GPL eventually. ... In practice, ... I will put a conventional copyright on it that converts at a later time to GPL. And if I can get a law firm to hold onto it pro bono and release it for me at a later date, I'd be happy to hand it over to them. I would like to do this as a statement of good faith that I'm not going to go back on my word."

OGD Architecture

OGD is the series of FPGA-based development cards used by the Open Graphics Project for OGA and OGC series cards' RTL design.

A poster wondered about using a simpler development card, saying "I'd happily settle for a cut down card that can crash my PCI bus if I screw up. Second hand PCs are free for most geeks. I'd program it over a USB port, from another machine, and be happy."

"But Timothy cautioned "There may be some room for non populating some parts, but it probably wouldn't bring the price down much."

OGD competition

John noticed a board for PCI development: http://pcdandm.com/cms/cms/content/view/2559/95/
"It seems that Xilinx has created a PCI express HDK that uses a Spartan-3 XC3S1000 (I presume webpack capable) and a Philips PX1011A pci express physical layer chip. The board has 32MBx32 of DDR ram, a philips TDA8777HL 10-bit video DAC, and a bunch of other stuff I didn't take the time to look over. The cost: $349"

Timothy compared the features and noted that "For a lot of what we want to do, the 3S1000 on there is too small. The memory bus is only 32 bit; not nearly enough bandwidth. The only video output is a single analog. No DVI."

However as shown in the announcements, there were some real developments and progress with the first Open Graphics Development board OGD1.

Using OGD1 in other projects

A group wondered about their interest in Audio and asked if OGD would be suitable for development. Timothy pointed out that: OGD1 would make a good stop-gap platform to prove out some of the basic ideas (such as trying out cumulative error audio DACs, mixing, etc, single channel). Then that has been done, we'll have a better idea of what the final product should look like and we can build something specifically for that. Jack balanced the query with the sage comment: The spirit of the open source community is that nobody can stop you from scratching your itch. OGP needs to concentrate its resources on the task it's taken on, and probably can't give you a lot of practical help with an audio product right now. But you don't need permission from OGP or anyone else to organize a team with the right skills and pursue your own goals. I think the list discussion has at least suggested some of the questions that need to be investigated before writing product specs, and that's a first step.

Who is Who..

josephhenryblack is now a wiki administrator. Currently the Open Graphics Project shares a wiki that is hosted by Russell. Joseph explained: The change is not great, in that if you want a page deleted, now you can ask me. Russell did point out: It does cost me a significant amount (nearly $100/mo) to keep this server up (wiki and mail list), (...) the server does do other things that have nothing to do with OGP, but if someone wants to chip in a bit to help offset the costs, I'm not going to complain. My paypal account is the email address this mail is sent from, if the urge hits.

Quote from the list:

• truly open hardware like this is certainly something to watch. If this bird can fly, it could be the beginning of a sea change in the industry. That is the one thing that has always frustrated me about the PC industry. Everybody guards their 'precious' so jealously that nothing ever works quite right. :/

OGP in the News

• Osnews ://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=14754
• http://www.usefree.org/projects/

Mini FAQ for the Open Graphics Mailing list.

Where is the list?
Gmane.comp.graphics.opengraphics
How can I get it?
Using your favourite newreader, point it towards news.gmane.org and subscribe to comp.graphics.opengraphics
Which newsreader can I use?
There are many. Specialist software such as Pan (Linux & Windows) or Gravity (Windows) are well known, but there are many others, and often your favourite email software can mostly function as a newsreader.
Can anyone post?
Yes, the list is moderated

Suggestions for this newsletter are welcome and are made through the mailing lists.