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Open Graphics Project

The Open Graphics Project (OGP) aims to design an open source hardware / open architecture and standard for graphics cards, primarily targeting free software / open source operating systems. The project will first be developing reprogrammable development and prototyping boards, but aims to eventually produce a full-featured and competitive end-user graphics card.

OGD1

The first short-term goal is to implement a prototype PCI graphics card dubbed OGD1 using a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chip. Although this card will not be able to compete with existing graphics cards on the market performance- or functionality-wise, it will be useful as a tool for prototyping the first application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) board, as well as for other professionals needing programmable graphics cards or FPGA-based prototyping boards. It is hoped that this prototype will attract enough interest to gain some profit and attract investors for the next card, since it is expected to cost around $2,000,000 to start the production of a specialized ASIC design. Later AGP and PCI Express variations will follow. The initial prototypes of OGD1 are available as of January 2007.

Full specifications will be published and open source device drivers will be released. All RTL will be released. Source code to the device drivers and BIOS will be released under the MIT and BSD licenses. The RTL (in Verilog) used for the FPGA and the RTL used for the ASIC are planned to be released under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

It will have 256 MiB of DDR RAM, passively cooled and follow the DDC, EDID, DPMS and VBE VESA standards. TV-out is also planned.

Versioning schema

Versioning schema for OGD1 will go like this:

{Root Number} – {Video Memory}{Video Output Interfaces}{Special Options e.g: A1 OGA firmware installed}

Field	Example Value	Example Description
Root number	OGD1P-	OGD1 board with PCI Bus
Video memory	256	256 MiB
Video outputs, in order, skip any not installed
First interface	D	Dual-link DVI
Second interface	D	Dual-link DVI
Third interface	A	Analog video, 75 ohm, VGA compatible
Fourth interface	V	TV video
Special options, in alphanumeric order, each preceded by a dash
Factory firmware-RTL	A1	OGA1 Firmware

OGD1 components

Main components of OGD1 graphics card (shown on the picture)

A) DVI transmitter pair A

B) DVI transmitter pair B

C) 330MHz triple 10-bit DAC (behind)

D) TV chip

E) 2x4 256 megabit DDR SDRAM (front, behind)

F) Xilinx 3S4000 FPGA (main chip)

G) Lattice XP10 FPGA (host interface)

H) SPI PROM 1 Mibit

J) SPI PROM 16 Mibit

K) 3x 500MHz DACs (optional)

L) 64-bit PCI-X edge connector

M) DVI-I connector A and connector B

N) S-Video connector

O) 100-pin expansion bus connector

Divisions/terms related to OGP

Open Graphics Project (OGP):The group of people developing OGA, its written documentation, and its products.Open Graphics Architecture (OGA):The trade name for open graphics architectures specified by the Open Graphics Project.Open Graphics Development (OGD):The initial FPGA-based experimentation board used as a test platform for TRV ASICs.Traversal Technology (TRV):The commercial name for the first ASIC products, based on the Open Graphics Architecture.Open Graphics Card (OGC):Graphics cards based on TRV chips.Open Hardware Foundation (OHF):A non-profit corporation whose charter is to promote the design and production of open source and open documentation hardware.

References

External links

The official Open Graphics wiki
Project VGA - another free graphics core project, aiming at cheaper hardware
Manticore - an older FPGA-based free graphics core implementation
The master thesis " An FPGA-based 3D Graphics System" illustrates very well the design decisions to make, while developing a FPGA-based 3D graphics core.