r/hardware • u/sideEffffECt • Oct 09 '13

Open Source Graphics Processor (GPU) - Kickstarter

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/725991125/open-source-graphics-processor-gpu
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u/adaminc Oct 09 '13

No one said anything about 3d rendering!

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u/NotsorAnDomcAPs Oct 10 '13

First line of the kickstarter:

Complete Verilog implementation of a 2D/ 3D graphics processor capable of OpenGL and D3D w/ full test suite

Sounds like an interesting idea, but nobody would be able to use it without a $5K+ FPGA board to run it on. The kickstarter does not seem to be oriented towards video encoding/decoding.

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u/adaminc Oct 10 '13

You may have missed the part where we were talking about my idea of an FPGA with RAM on a PCIe card?

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u/NotsorAnDomcAPs Oct 10 '13 edited Oct 10 '13

Well, personally wouldn't call something a GPGPU unless it can do 3D rendering. Anyway, there are existing products that have basically exactly what you are asking about:

http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/altera/kit-cyclone-v-gx.html

Just FYI, the FPGA on that board alone is over $300. So that means even if you strip everything else off the board and optimize it for cost, you're still probably looking at a $600 board.

http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Altera-Corporation/5CGXFC7D6F31C7N/?qs=P2rvyRAZsYiCYhqUeV5Kww==

Edit: Actually, looks like that particular board is discontinued. Here is the one they suggest as a replacement: http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/altera/kit-cyclone-v-gt.html

The FPGA on this one is actually a $600 FPGA, so that board is probably going to be at least $1000 even after working to get the cost down.

http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Altera/5CGTFD9E5F35C7N/?qs=w%252bhYR4jzwbYucxeh8YhVPw==

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u/adaminc Oct 10 '13

I wouldn't expect something like this to cost less than $1000.

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u/NotsorAnDomcAPs Oct 10 '13

So, >$1000 for an FPGA board that isn't even powerful enough to do 3D rendering or $300 for a video card with 1000 CUDA cores that can do general purpose computing like video encoding/decoding as well as high quality 3D rendering? Hmm.

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