Parallella Community

I just saw this kickstarter for an open source RTL GPU and thought it would be interesting to use it on the Parallella platform.
I'm an FPGA designer and I supported the parallella kickstarter because I thought it would be a cool little development platform for me to use for fpga design work and eventually learn to use the Epiphany coprocessor. I like the idea of using this GPU because it should work with existing linux graphics drivers and I could look at the GPU RTL and try to implement parts of it in the Epiphany coprocessor.
I've been reading the forum and have noticed a bunch of topics that have ended with "but the Parallella does not have a GPU" maybe this could be the GPU that will solve some of those problems?

I saw that campaign also and it certainly looks interesting!

I wonder if anyone could comment on practicalities such what could be achieved in GPU terms by using the available space in the Zynq-7020 FPGA?

Cheers,

Andrew

IMHO That KS isn't that interesting for the parallella. (at least the 200k$ goal, some of the stretch goal might be more interesting but).

- This GPU is already an existing 2D design that was targetted at the "PC" marker and as such it as some feature that are useless for the parallella and can take a lot of resources, like for instance a full VGA compatibility ...
- It's only 2D and not much acceleration : "2D accelerator supporting lines, solid fills, patterned fills and bit BLTs". Well I don't think a modern X display would take much advantage of "lines / solids fills / patterned fills". The 2D blits are certainly more useful, but you can probably code that in HDL to add it to the ADI reference design (and do it fairly quickly using HLS and a AXI master connector)
- Someone on IRC pasted some 'size' numbers for the IP (not exactly sure where from) and they were pretty significant and would occupy a good part of the 7020.

That's good to know — and that we can rely on you for considered, practical perspectives

Yeah, on a PC that would make sense ... but you're running on an ARM with a different bus architecture, where the legacy VGA address and access methods don't even make any sense ...

I'm Frank Bruno, co-founder of Silicon Spectrum and the one who put the kickstarter up.
I'd be happy to answer any questions you guys might have or discuss the graphics on the 7020.

I do have a few things I can immediately add:
I am currently talking to Adaptiva about porting the graphics to the parallella board. The 7010 would fit the 2D just fine, the 7020 would fit the 3D. The 2D would take most of the 7010 in its current configuration, however, we are looking at some ideas for size reduction. The 2D would take about 1/4 of the 7020. The 3D would take most of the 7020, but again, we are looking at size reduction.

Both parts are configurable, so things like the VGA can be left out in an embedded part.
The 2D also has things like translucency, ROPs and other things that can really tax a system as the CPU would need to do the read modify write cycles. We also offer glyph acceleration and a Display List processor to further remove overhead from the CPU.

There is a 2D driver available on Xorg (The i128 driver will work with our core). My Cyclone V SOC board arrives today and I'll be looking at getting it running on the ARM. There is no 3D driver yet, that will take a little work.

For the past 10 years we have done all our development on FPGAs, starting w/ the Cyclone parts and going through the arria V. We intentionally have worked to keep performance up and size down. Once the embedded port is done, I can give hard #s for the Zynq.

To me the question isn't really if the core can be made to fit and adapted to the parallella (I'm sure it can be).

The main question is "Is this something that would be delivered as part of the kickstarter ?"

We modified the kickstarter a few days ago to include the embedded core at the $200K level.
We intend to support the Zynq and the Cyclone V SOC.
We will be releasing the drivers when functional.
At some point we will release the project files for these boards, but we have about a half dozen requests for different platforms, so it's hard to say exactly when we would release something "push button". I'd estimate within a few months after the kickstarter is done.

Hi All,

I have just found this URL:

http://www.logicbricks.com/logicBRICKS/ ... Board.aspx

It has a GPU for the Zedboard which might be able to be ported for Parallella.


Kind Regards,


Julian.