Re: HARDWARE: Open-Source-Friendly Graphics Cards -- Viable?

[Jan Rychter]

>>>>> "Jan" == Jan Knutar <jk-lkml@xxxxxx> writes:
 Jan> On Thursday 21 October 2004 19:34, Stephen Wille Padnos wrote:
 >> I'm thinking more like microcode.  The functional blocks on the chip
 >> would be capable of being "rewired" by the OS, depending on the
 >> applications being run.  All of the functions would still operate
 >> out of card-local memory.

 Jan> Are you thinking something along the lines of an
 Jan> optimizing+profiling host-CPU-software-renderer to
 Jan> FPGA-reprogrammed JIT accelerator? :)

 Jan> The idea of reprogramming the hardware to toss out the line
 Jan> drawing and other things that GTK and friends probably only
 Jan> present to X as pixmaps anyway, and use that 'die space' for
 Jan> something else, is certainly appealing.

 Jan> Of course, for a software -> hardware JITc, I think the budget
 Jan> required would be a few magnitudes more than mentioned here
 Jan> earlier, and half a decade of debugging or more ontop..

This isn't *strictly* related to the main topic of this discussion, but:
You might want to look at the Stretch CPU (http://www.stretchinc.com/),
which, incidentally, runs Linux. Or rather the Xtensa part of it does.

--J.

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