It’s been a while since any of us have seen head or tail of the Open Graphics Project, but they haven’t been just sitting around twiddling thumbs. Enjoy an in-depth interview between OSNews and Timothy Miller, the founder of the Open Graphics Project and the main man behind the drive that keeps it going, and Michael Dexter, Program Director at Linux Fund and a key player in Linux Fund’s partnership with the OGP. Though it’s been some time since there has been much public action, much of the work that the OGP has been putting into the OGD1 is finally coming to fruition.

Linux Fund has raised money to build an initial ten OGD1s for open

source developers. Their fund-raising has exceeded the initial

fundraising goal of $5000; does this mean that additional cards will be

produced?

Our initial estimate of $5000 was based on a combination of hope and

assumptions. Our original estimates were based on a 100-board production run. However, there are costs that remain

fixed when you scale down the quantities, more than we had anticipated.

Fortunately, the nearly $8,500 we have raised has allowed us to go

ahead with a production run of 25 boards and Linux Fund has loaned the

effort the additional funds needed to complete it. We are counting on

selling at least 10 boards to break even and will have them available

for purchase when the first boards are available to volunteer

developers.





Can you please give us an estimate of your progress thus far?



Besides the physical hardware, being build and undergoing testing and

flashing, we have a sizable library of logic

blocks (hardware vendors sometimes call these “IP blocks”) that we’ve

developed. This includes things like controllers for PCI, DDR memory,

SPI PROMs, video, and even a simple MIPS-like microcontroller.

Using those, we’ve developed working VGA emulation for OGD1. VGA isn’t

trivial since it requires a text mode where characters are rendered

into pixels on the fly as they’re being scanned out to the monitor.

Instead of implementing that directly, we use our microcontroller

(named HQ) to convert VGA text into pixels in the background,

continuously scanning and reconverting the text buffer. This approach

was much less invasive than hacking our video controller, and we were

going to require a microcontroller anyhow to support DMA (at a future

date). This also required a VGA BIOS. All of this can be found in the

Open Graphics Subversion repository.

The svn head of the firmware needs some additional work to make it

ready for release, and we could use some help with that. Meanwhile, we

have a slightly older release that

does work, which we will be programming into the shipping boards.

It is important these cards get

into the hands of active developers.

What will happen to a card if its developer withdraws from the project?



Linux Fund owns these boards. Although OGP and Traversal Technology

people are involved in the work, the financial and legal situation is

that Linux Fund licensed the designs under the GPL and paid for the

production. For developers who are given a board for

free, the boards are technically on loan. If a developer decides to no longer be

involved, they can either buy the board or they can help us to pass it

on to another developer. Moreover, Linux Fund should be able to recall

a board at any time if they determine that it is not being used for the

intended purpose.

What is the target price you would

like to sell the consumer version of

your card at?



Originally, OGD1 was a fund raiser, and we were going to sell them at

$1500 apiece. Even today, $1500 is a competitive price for a board of

this complexity, but we will be selling it at half that with the goal of

breaking even.

I just want to make it clear that our goal here is not necessarily to

make a profit. What we want is to build “open” (Free-Design) hardware

products. One way to do it is to create a self-sustaining business.

Linux Fund came along with an alternative. Nobody is making any profit

from this now, but if we’re successful with getting developers on board

to make interesting stuff using OGD1 boards, this may attract more

donations in the future that we can use to create hardware products

that Free Software users can really take advantage of.

To Free Software users, the biggest challenge is hardware whose vendors

won’t release docs on their products. Without them, we can’t make free

drivers that allow us to use the hardware we paid for. For some people,

the answer is to pressure the hardware vendors into releasing docs. For

us, the answer is to create our own hardware with designs that are free

to begin with.

Going forward, we hope for opportunity for commercial development

because quite a large number of us would love to design hackable and

Free-Software-friendly hardware as our day jobs.

Companies that are

enthusiastic about supporting Free Software are something our community

really needs.

Are there plans to develop a PCI express version of the open graphics

card? If so, what time frame will this be in?

This all depends on the community. Before OGD1, we didn’t have any real

hardware to show people, so we weren’t taken seriously. With OGD1,

perhaps now people will feel we’ve proven ourselves and decide to get

involved. To make a PCIe version of OGD1 will require community

expertise and community funding.

Please note that OGD1 isn’t strictly a graphics card. It’s an

FPGA-based prototyping platform that can be made into a graphics card.

But it can also be made into innumerable other things. I’m interested

in doing things ranging from recording-studio quality audio processing

to wireless networking.

You said that you’ve got 25 graphics

boards produced and

they’re ready for programming. What’s the process that needs to be done

for said programming?



All of the 25 boards we produced need to be tested for manufacturing

defects and overall serviceability. Once they pass this testing, FPGA

and BIOS PROMs will be flashed with with the latest working firmware. We hope to have the first few boards tested and ready for delivery by OSCON.







You’ve put out a call for developers,

but do you have a date that

you’re looking at for an official launch of sorts? Any shindigs planned

(virtual or real)? How soon will the developers and the purchasers have

their boards?

We don’t have any firm dates yet and we are patiently waiting for the

first batch of tested and flashed boards. This whole project has been

an exercise in patience given the nature of hardware. Unlike software,

you can’t just tar it up and e-mail to the team. If we have boards by

OSCON, we will definitely raise a toast to the project!





Are you hoping to build more OGD1

boards after these initial 25? How

soon do you think this could be accomplished– or what needs to happen

before this can be accomplished?



We would love to build more boards if the academic or private demand

exists. A second run certainly wouldn’t take as long as this first and

it is largely a question of money. No one wanted to take any risks with

this first run and we are fortunate that Linux Fund was willing to

front the extra money we needed.

It sounds like it’s been a rough road

for the Open Graphics Project to

accomplish its goals; has it been harder than initially expected? What

were/are some of the major roadblocks throughout the project?



Given that the to-do list was always clear, it was more a question of

frustration than difficulty. Speaking from Linux Fund’s perspective,

the first challenge was raising enough money to comfortably begin the

manufacturing process and then minor component-availability issues.

For one of the chips, the price in the US had gone from $5 to over $15 was officially unavailable during the fundraising process. We

found ourselves nervously buying from an overseas vendor using a combination of Skype and PayPal. Luckily, we

didn’t end up with a box of expensive chopsticks. Aside from those

challenges, our general dependence on volunteer help has led to a few

delays given that we’re competing with personal lives. We’d like to

congratulate one project member on the birth of their daughter during

the project!

That said, everything they say about the challenges of hardware are

true: it is a moving target thanks to component pricing and

availability and the countless physical variables. We’re still not out

of the woods until we’re sure that every surface-mounted pad is

correctly soldered in place and that no other defects have emerged.

In the big picture, while the OGD1 has relatively good longevity, any

volunteer-driven open hardware project runs the risk of being obsolete

before ever reaching production.

In addition to Linux Fund and the

selling of some of the OGD1 boards to

create sources for funding, have you considered other community-funding

routes such as Kickstarter.com?



While we admire the PR that Kickstarter.com is receiving, we are

concerned that they are neither a 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit

nor rely on actual funds received. Linux Fund has operated its capital

projects since 2008 and feels it has a better, albeit lesser-known

model.







How many people have really been at

the core of the Open Graphics

Project? Are there any people who especially stand out for their work

and contribution?



Howard Parkin and Andy Fong get most of the credit for the printed

circuit board, with some help from various others along the way.

Timothy Miller developed most of the FPGA logic. Petter Urkedal is

primarily responsible for the HQ microcontroller, along with a lot of

its programming. Mark Marshall is primarily responsible for the VGA

BIOS code. Mark Marshall is the official maintainer of the FPGA code

for the Lattice XP10. Patrick McNamara is the official maintainer of

the FPGA code for the Xilinx Spartan III 4000. Howard Parkin, Mark

Marshall, and Petter Urkedal did a vast amount of simulation and

hardware testing and debugging all of the FPGA and BIOS code to get it

to work to the point you see in this

video.

Is there any room for a newbie to

contribute to this project? What

would he/she have to learn to work on drivers or firmware? Is there an

ODG1 101 to help people interested in the project but with a limited

skill set?



On the Open Graphics Project wiki, there are some Verilog tutorials

we’ve written for people who would like to get started on learning how

to design chips. Even for those who don’t have hardware in their

hands, a lot of FPGA work can be done just in simulation, and there is

Free Verilog simulation software (e.g. Icarus Verilog). Plus there is

a ton of software work to be done. Right now, we have a working BIOS

and microcode for VGA text mode, but we’d like to improve it, adding

things like VGA graphics mode.

Finally, one of my dreams is to make the hardware equivalent of GCC. We

really need a fully free chip design toolchain. Such a thing would

lower the barrier to entry for those who want to design hardware, and

it would also be a huge benefit to hardware vendors. FPGA vendors sink

a lot of money into their synthesis tools. Most are pretty good, but

they can also be very expensive. Developing a free toolchain would

allow the hardware vendors to focus on hardware and give everyone Free

and potentially better tools. I’d say that the cost of proprietary FPGA

synthesis tools is the biggest barrier to entry for someone wanting to

get into FPGA hacking. I have the background in both chip design and AI

necessary to help design these tools, but we’d need a team of

developers to complete the project.

Developers Interested In Obtaining an OGD1





As stated at LinuxFund.org, “the goal of this developer program is two-fold: To guarantee solid open source operating system driver support and to stimulate innovative uses of this unique computing platform. Interested developers are invited to write ogd1@linuxfund.org with a description of their background, technical qualifications and how they would use an OGD1.

OGD1 boards must legally remain Linux Fund property to satisfy IRS requirements and developers must agree to return their board should they discontinue their work for whatever reason, allowing another developer to use the board. Both short-term and long-term projects are encouraged.”