Kickstarter: Open Source Graphics Processor (GPU)

[Ian Stirling]

On 10/12/2013 05:43 PM, Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:
> The main fear I have is that there is not enough funding because 
> nobody can really use it in daily work without investing another lots 
> of money (to integrate the FPGA with something). BR, Nikolaus

Speaking in generalities - FPGAs use lots more power for a given task 
than dedicated hardware.
They are also a lot more expensive.
This is unlikely to be $400K investment, then $20 per chip.
More like 400K investment leading to something that works on a $1000 
FPGA, and uses several times the
power of a comparable device.

Is this interesting - in principle - yes - combined with an ARM licence, 
it could lead to a moderately low risk CPU, if someone were willing to 
put up the several-many million to make a CPU with it on die.

Off-die GPUs are an utter non-starter for mobile devices.