[HN Gopher] Alice 4 FPGA Rasterizer (Open Hardware Video Card Re...
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       Alice 4 FPGA Rasterizer (Open Hardware Video Card Related)
        
       Author : peter_d_sherman
       Score  : 48 points
       Date   : 2021-02-21 16:19 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (lkesteloot.github.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (lkesteloot.github.io)
        
       | phkahler wrote:
       | This is cute, but rasterizing 50M pixels per second is child's
       | play on a modern processor. I'm pretty sure we can raytrace 50M
       | Ray's per second on a modern 8 core CPU with a scene of moderate
       | complexity.
        
       | peter_d_sherman wrote:
       | >"The Alice 4 rasterizer is broken into two main parts:
       | 
       | A software library linked with the C application program. The
       | library implements the IrisGL API. It performs transformations,
       | lighting, clipping, and retained mode (display lists). Its output
       | is a list of commands (clear screen, draw triangle, swap buffers,
       | etc.) that it writes to memory outside Linux's range.
       | 
       | An FPGA configuration that reads these commands from SDRAM and
       | executes them. For triangles it interpolates color (RGB) and
       | depth (Z). The FPGA also scans out the image buffer to the LCD
       | and performs other minor tasks."
        
         | tyingq wrote:
         | Sounds fairly similar to what Trammel Hudson has done with the
         | BeagleBone and video output for old Macs and LED matrix
         | displays. The Beagle Bone cpu has a pair of PRUs that can share
         | memory with the main ARM cpu and host Linux OS.
         | 
         | https://trmm.net/Mac-SE_video/
         | 
         | https://trmm.net/Category%3ALEDscape/
        
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       (page generated 2021-02-21 23:01 UTC)