So today I was thinking about the RISC-V architecture and how it is awesome that an open CPU instruction architecture exists that anyone can implement in FPGA or custom silicon (assuming you can afford to), and then I thought about something – if people have made an open CPU architecture, why not an open GPU architecture to go along with it? Think about it. If you’re making a system-on-a-chip that uses an open processor ISA, wouldn’t it make sense to pair it with an open graphics architecture instead of having to sign some contract to implement someone’s intellectual property just to get graphics?
Luckily, it seems I’m not the first person to think about this – there is something called the Open Graphics Project which aimed to create an open architecture standard for graphics card. Sadly, it seems that project has been defunct for a few years at least, as their website is non-functional as of writing this, and the Wayback Machine’s latest working snapshot appears to be from 2015. Which makes me kind of sad because I think it is a good idea, and I would not be able to do it myself (I think I have made it clear multiple times that when it comes to hardware, I don’t really know what I am doing).
Well, I guess those are my two cents. If anyone has any comments, there’s a comments section. If that’s not enough, there’s a contact form on the about me page. You have an awesome day!
