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New open source GPU is free to all — FuryGPU runs Quake at 60fps, supports modern Windows software (www.tomshardware.com)

submitted 7 months ago by treadful@lemmy.zip to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] elliot_crane@lemmy.world 320 points 7 months ago (4 children)

The article title is straight up misinformation at present. From the article itself:

The FuryGPU is set to be open-sourced. “I am intending on open-sourcing the entire stack (PCB schematic/layout, all the HDL, Windows WDDM drivers, API runtime drivers, and Quake ported to use the API) at some point, but there are a number of legal issues,” Barrie wrote in a Hacker News post on Wednesday. Because he works in a tangentially related vocation, he wants to make sure none of this work would break his work contract or licensing etc.

Nothing against OP who simply copied the title, nor the project author. This is impressive but it’s not yet open source and there may be legal hurdles preventing it from becoming so.

[–] treadful@lemmy.zip 72 points 7 months ago

That's fair. I'm hoping for the best outcome.

[–] MyNamesNotRobert@lemmynsfw.com 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

If they never release the source, including all the fpga verilog files then this is pointless to the open source community.

Edit: actually I just realized my comment is kind of pointless. Even if he released the fpga source code, a thing a lot of projects like these never do, it still wouldn't be possible to reproduce one of these using only free and open source software. This is because the only fpgas that let you program them using open source software and not a locked-down windows-only bloatfuck program that needs an internet connection and licensing are the lattice ice40 fpgas. Tl;dr this can't be fully "open source".

I wonder if it would be possible to make an ice 40 based video card that could still do opengl.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You could probably fab it onto an ASIC, which avoids the non-free software part (aside from the fab itself). So still way cool.

[–] MyNamesNotRobert@lemmynsfw.com 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Open source fpgas cost up to $10 per chip, $17 if you want the big chungus 256 pin one with lots of extra memory and logic blocks. You can get pcb printing services for like $7 per board but I think I paid less than that last time I built something.

I'm pretty sure custom made ASICs cost orders of magnitude more than that.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 months ago

For one, sure, but I'm guessing prices come down quite a bit once we're talking larger numbers, like hundreds of thousands.

But those are really good prices though.

[–] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 7 months ago

ah, so thats why it supports windows. Ok.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 months ago

I'd be willing to help fund a lawyer reviewing things to ensure it can be open sourced.