Miaow - The first Free/Open graphics processor.

12 Antworten [Letzter Beitrag]
Jabjabs
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Beigetreten: 07/05/2014

So this is still in the prototype stage but this is some great news for the future of free hardware design.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/semiconductors/processors/miaow-an-opensource-graphics-processor

Jabjabs
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Beigetreten: 07/05/2014

Text to make it easier for everyone.

"Say Hello to MIAOW, the First Open Source Graphics Processor
By Alexander Hellemans

While open-source hardware is already available for CPUs, researchers from the Vertical Research Group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have announced at the Hot Chips Event in Cupertino, Calif., that they have created the first open source general-purpose graphics processor (GPGPU).

Called MIAOW, which stands for Many-core Integrated Accelerator Of the Waterdeep, the processor is a resistor-transistor logic implementation of AMD's open source Southern Islands instruction set architecture. The researchers published a white paper on the device.

The creation of MIAOW is the latest in a series of steps meant to keep processor development in step with Moore's Law, explains computer scientist Karu Sankaralingham, who leads the Wisconsin research group.

“We need innovative new hardware modules, new types of processors, new types of hardware accelerators, and so on,” he says. Open source hardware represents a promising new avenue. “I envision five, ten years from now companies will be leveraging open-source hardware, just like it happened with open-source software,” says Sankaralingham. “For example, Facebook was built mainly using PHP. PHP is completely open source. It would be hard to imagine that Facebook would have gotten off the ground if PHP wasn't there.”

Sankaralingham and his colleagues decided to focus on a graphics processor when AMD made the Instruction Set Architecture of one of its graphics processors available. Graphics processors are increasingly replacing CPUs for number crunching.

“What GPGPUs are good at is using GPU architecture to tackle highly computationally intense problems,” says Sankaralingham. “Their architectures have two important properties: They provide very high performance and they are very power efficient.” Consequently, GPUs will be used in, for example, driverless cars, navigation systems, the Internet of Things, and deep learning. In all of these environments, there is a big need for very high computation speed at low power use, the Wisconsin researcher notes.

For now, MIAOW is strictly an academic research project. “One impact it will have in my field,” says Sankaralingham, “is that academic researchers, who have a very low-level hardware implementation in their research, are going to adopt our ideas."

Another important consequence of the group’s work is that it has “demonstrated that smart teams can go and build meaningful hardware parts that can compete with high-end industrial products.” Sankaralingham says he sees his group’s research as a stepping stone to the building of completely clean-slate designs that don't rely on any existing commercial products from industry. "

commodore256
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Beigetreten: 01/10/2013

That's pretty cool, I just looked it up not even 2 hours before I saw this post.

Larissa

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Beigetreten: 07/12/2014

https://github.com/VerticalResearchGroup/miaow There is the source code.
http://miaowgpu.org/ Here is the homepage.

Chris

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Beigetreten: 04/23/2011

Keep in mind it's not something commercially available and we don't entirely know what they mean by "open source". AMD has "open source" graphics chip too, but it's not free software.

Jabjabs
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Beigetreten: 07/05/2014

The commercially available part was a given, the freedoms part actually could be an issue seeing as this is based off AMDs open parts.

Yet another example of Open doesn't necessarily mean free.

Larissa

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Beigetreten: 07/12/2014

But because we build the GPU, doesn´t that mean, that we would have to develop the firmware?

But seeing, that no one develop it, I think that this thing will be never released. What a shame. We have some open CPU´s but no one is building them...

tomlukeywood
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Beigetreten: 12/05/2014

"Yet another example of Open doesn't necessarily mean free"

but if you can view the source code it should be easy to make a free version of the program?

so in this case it may not matter too much

commodore256
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Beigetreten: 01/10/2013

The license sounds free. https://github.com/VerticalResearchGroup/miaow/commit/dafd39709dcc78e2a2c4f643dd7d4e4901219aa4

Also, it is software, Verrlog code is software.

davidnotcoulthard (nicht überprüft)
davidnotcoulthard

Look below.

davidnotcoulthard (nicht überprüft)
davidnotcoulthard

Firmware better be Free. vrij. Vry. Libre. You get the idea.

Coupled with thast AMD server board thingie.....aahhh it'll be lovely, or not??

davidnotcoulthard (nicht überprüft)
davidnotcoulthard

If they don't release the firmware libre, what are the chances of a successful kickstarter (OK we'll need another money-raising scheme, but you get the idea) to bribe them into releasing it?

Larissa

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Beigetreten: 07/12/2014

At this point we need hardware developers, and software developers. I don´t think, that the firmware will be a problem.
It can´t produce pictures at this point.