OStatic

The Open Graphics Project, whose goal is to create a completely open graphics card for use in personal computers, announced a milestone of sorts last week: the availability of their prototype OGD1 card for pre-orders. The OGD1 is not, as some folks seem to believe, a $1500 graphics card. To really understand what's going on here, you need to step back a minute and get a broad overview of the project roadmap.

One of the problems with open source operating systems in general has been the lack of good support for the advanced features of cutting-edge video cards. That's because manufacturers like ATI and Nvidia have lots of proprietary knowledge locked up in their hardware, and they've been in no hurry to share specs and driver details with the open source community.

Hence, the birth of the Open Graphics Foundation. They propose to make a graphics card that is end-to-end open, from the details of the hardware to the source code of the drivers. If there was a really open graphics card, then it would be, if not simple, at least possible to write drivers for it for any operating system.

Creating a graphics card is a huge project, but the folks involved, backed by a company named Traversal Technology, have made good progress. They're now at the point of having complete hardware specs for a development card including an FPGA and video ports and RAM (and a few other odds and ends). They need 100 pre-orders at $1500 each to go to their fabricator and order the cards. That's the OGD1.

If you buy an OGD1, you are not getting a graphics card. You're getting a general-purpose piece of programmable hardware with video ports and some basic diagnostic code. The plan is that hardware and software developers can use the OGD1 to flesh out the internal software that an open video card will need. At that point, if more money can be found (we're talking millions of dollars), the OGD1 and the developed software could be turned into a custom ASIC, which would be the basis for an actual graphics card.

Throughout the process, the OGF and Traversal are committed to keeping all of the IP involved open source. The plan is to dual-license some pieces, so Traversal can go into commercial production, and possibly to have a delay between creation and release of some of the hardware specs.

Creating a graphics card is not as hard as, say, landing a spaceship on Mars - but it's no trivial undertaking. While the OGF does have passionate, committed, and funded people involved, it's still going to be months or years before their efforts will bear fruit for the end user. But they're headed in the right direction.

• graphics
• ogd1
• fpga