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Comment by flohofwoe | Hacker News Reader

Here's a somewhat recent blog post I stumbled over which might be helpful:

https://rastergrid.com/blog/gpu-tech/2021/07/gpu-architectur...

There isn't a lot of actual under-the-hood information though, because GPUs are closed IPs. So the information needs to be pieced together from the occasional conference talks, performance optimization advice from GPU vendors and what enthusiasts reverse engineer by poking GPUs through the 3D APIs.

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Thanks. Ok, hear me out because here it comes naive time. GPU demand will continue to grow exponentially in this decade (VR, Crypto or whatever remains from it,ML,Data Eng,Steam Deck, Laptops etc)Wouldnt it be possible for some multi-country/university/companies to create a totally open GPU specification ? That has happened already? I understand we are talking about a long time of research effort and billions $$ but I think the benefits for all would be incredible. Open hardware, open libraries, open drivers. Imagine a world with no Linux, a totally closed x86 fully owned by IBM, closed webGL. Where can I read more about efforts in this direction if they exist?

What would be the point, besides an unprecedented, enormously ambitious hardware design learning project?

Executing shaders better than Nvidia and AMD is not likely.

Selling good graphics adapters at competitive prices to concrete users is even less likely.

Experiments with APIs would have a fatal adoption problem.

Avoiding DRM, if legally feasible, would be less useful than spending the same resources to support Sci-Hub or improve laws.

And of course for the more practical purpose of writing mere software, including Vulkan implementations, specifications are complete and open enough.

An open GPU design would be great for the RaspberryPi for instance, even if performance wouldn't be competitive with NVIDIA or AMD (it really doesn't need to be). I think a "RISC-V, but for GPUs" would make a lot of sense, e.g. RISC-V met a similar scepticism in the beginning, yet it seems to quickly gain steam in the last few years.

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