Open source GPU project on Kickstarter

A curious project started on Kickstarter a few days ago. His goal is to create an open [every kind of nonsense of marketers] and a modern graphics processor. By modernity, the author implies compatibility with OpenGL and D3D. The implementation of all this in the Verilog language, i.e. it is assumed that the finished board will be based on FPGA. On the one hand, this allows you to quickly take off and in the future switch to custom chips, on the other - before this transition, the price / quality ratio may not be at its best. Although the soul of the owner of such a card will warm the open source.



Developer, Silicon Spectrum, Inc. , in 2002, bought the license and all the documentation from the manufacturer of video chips Number Nine. There was such an office, Wikipedia remembers. These chips are implemented in FPGA and sold under their own name. For the project, collect $ 200k, with additional buns at $ 400k, $ 600k and $ 1M. It should be a 2D accelerator with a PCI interface, a 3D accelerator with support for OpenGL of an unknown version and D3D 8.0, and its two more stuffed with features and accelerated versions, respectively.
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The most interesting thing is that the developer writes almost straightforwardly that the 2D version is bought out eleven years ago and the then outdated Number Nine production processor, and it will simply open the source code. The minimal version of the 3D accelerator is not ready yet, but it can be completed in just a few months. Drivers, at least the first time, will be so-so. But the community will improve them, here, after all, the open-source is very strong.

Impressions of the project are mixed. On the one hand, the case is ideologically correct. On the other, there is a subtle smell of the air trade.