OLPC:News: Difference between revisions
(→PRESS) |
No edit summary |
||
| Line 4: | Line 4: | ||
=LAPTOP NEWS= |
=LAPTOP NEWS= |
||
1. Many put in Herculean efforts and as scheduled the first build of X0 was begun on Tuesday afternoon November 14th. About 35 operators assembled the laptops with the over-site of the entire technical team from Quanta and Mark Foster and Mary Lou Jepsen from OLPC and David Woodhouse from Red Hat on hand. The first laptop was started with its motherboard, and ran most of the way through the line alone —with every operator idle except for the one, each operator successively doing his or her job. After Laptop #1 had made it through about 20 operators, Laptop #2 was started. 221 laptops were built on Tuesday and an additional 600 units on Thursday; many are still in run-in and final test. |
|||
1. Shanghai: Mark Foster reports that the first prototypes of the OLPC XO-1 |
|||
are up and running! The team hand-assembled the first 10 units to evaluate |
|||
the system's many custom components, to perform systems-integration |
|||
testing, and to ensure that the production process is solid, all in |
|||
preparation for next week's B1-Test build. Quanta will assemble 900 OLPC |
|||
machines that will be used for destructive testing and distribution to our |
|||
development partners. Our vision is a step closer to becoming a reality. |
|||
2. As part of the follow up of last week's meeting, the IADB and OLPC issued a press release regarding strategic areas of common interest: (a) regional and national policy dialog regarding adopting a new approach to the use of computers in education; (b) technical assistance; (c) design and support for evaluation activities; (d) content development tailor-made to the 1-to-1 learning environment; (e) design of effective strategies to integrate individual computer devices in the daily lives of children, both at home and in school; and (f) design of effective approaches to supporting schools and teachers implementing 1-to-1 computing programs. |
|||
It cannot be overstated how much both the hardware and software teams have |
|||
poured their hearts and souls into reaching this milestone. Kudos to all of |
|||
them. |
|||
2. New York: Nicholas delivered a presentation at the closing session of the United Nations' International Forum on the Eradication of Poverty on Thursday. The session included Prof. Iqbal Quadir, Founder of Grameen phone and currently the Director, Program in Developmental Entrepreneurship at MIT. |
|||
2. Washington: IX Reunión Hemisférica de la Red de Educación is the annual |
|||
gathering of the vice ministers of education from Central and South America |
|||
at the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB). They hold an open discussion |
|||
about the most critical issues that they are facing; topics are suggested |
|||
by vice ministers themselves—this year they asked that one laptop per child |
|||
be the theme of their meeting. Nicholas, Walter Bender, Antonio Battro, and |
|||
David Cavallo presented at the meeting. |
|||
3. Santa Clara: Walter Bender gave a talk at the Silicon Valley Challenge Summit and demonstrated the laptop to the public—its first public showing. |
|||
3. The cover story of this month's Technology Review is an article about |
|||
OLPC, “Will This Save the World? The $100 Laptop.” The eight-page article |
|||
highlights both our technological innovations and our model of |
|||
“enterprising philanthropy”—an analogy is made to Andrew Carnegie's |
|||
successful campaign to foster the building of thousands of libraries during |
|||
the late 1800s. “OLPC will, should it succeed, serve as a new model for |
|||
getting the nonprofit, private, and public sectors to work together |
|||
efficiently and productively. Technology Review also filmed interviews with |
|||
Nicholas, Walter, and Seymour Papert, which will appear on the Video |
|||
Section of their website, www.techreview.com. |
|||
4. Cambridge: OLPC held an all-hands meeting to review B1 status and organize our selves for the next phase of development, initial testing, and deployment. All aspects of the system were given a thorough review and critique. |
|||
4. An ultraviolet-exposure (UV) test chamber has been built and exposure |
|||
tests are underway; however, we expect no problem on this. Why? The |
|||
polarizer—newly selected this week—has extremely low UV transmission to the |
|||
liquid crystal (0.1% throughput in the 310–400nm). Further data on the |
|||
liquid crystal was provided by Merck suggesting that it is extremely |
|||
resistant to UV damage. UV blocker has been added to the plastics in the |
|||
housing to make it more robust in UV. To be safe, we are testing anyway. |
|||
5. The arrival of the machines has accelerated the software. We can finally see the fonts, test the keyboard, and feel the performance. We've already fixed a number of small bugs this week and will be able to make an update BIOS and OS image release for people to use on the B1 machines. |
|||
5. Jim Gettys and Chris Blizard report that this week has been incredibly |
|||
busy for the software team. We have “frozen” for our alpha software release |
|||
for the B1 machines, although it being an alpha release, "the ice is |
|||
relatively slushy due to the fluid nature of early development and critical |
|||
bug fixes will be applied up until the last moment." We expect to have the |
|||
Sugar framework, web browser, chat, a simple text editor derived from |
|||
Abiword, a simple version of the music application (mini-Tamtam), a memory |
|||
game, and eToys in the base system. Numerous other applications and demos |
|||
will be in a repository where they can be readily downloaded. |
|||
In short: we shipped a BIOS, a bootloader, embedded-controller code, a working Linux system with support for all devices, a new user-interface environment, along with a web browser, music programs, network manager, chat program, and word processor. |
|||
6. Pierre Ossman, the secure digital host controller interface (SDHCI) |
|||
Linux driver maintainer, and Andres Salomon worked on testing SD on CAFE, |
|||
which has been released for tape-out. Together they got high-speed mode |
|||
working for some cards. Some patches made it into the official OLPC-2.6 git |
|||
repository, so users can now do about 5–6 MB/s data reads from SD and MMC |
|||
cards (rather than the rather slow 1.5 MB/s). Performance of NAND is much |
|||
faster than the Geode NAND controller, but full performance isn't expected |
|||
until we get the CAFE ASIC back. |
|||
In thanking all of those who have contributed to this effort, we undoubted missed someone; our apologies for those whom we fail to mention below. |
|||
7. Jon Corbet continued working on the camera driver, which can now support |
|||
multiple image sizes including QVGA. Last to come, probably not before B1, |
|||
will be hooking up the brightness and hue/saturation controls; this is due |
|||
to lack of timely response from Omnivision—the requested information only |
|||
arrived Friday evening. Andres merged Jon's latest updates into the OLPC |
|||
tree, and worked getting gstreamer's v4l2src plug-in to work with the |
|||
camera. It provides a quick and easy way to grab images and video from the |
|||
camera module. |
|||
The BIOS, EC code, and bootloader were brought to you by Mitch Bradley, Ted Juan, Vance Ke, Arvin Liu, Ron Minnich, Richard Smith, Lilian Walter, Tom Sylla, Terry Su, Ray Tseng, and the LinuxBIOS team. |
|||
8. Audio has been tested, and, short of formal audio testing that will take |
|||
place during B-Test, appears to be very high quality. However, we will not |
|||
have the analog input working at the beginning of B-Test. |
|||
The base system was brought to you by the team of Chris Ball, Michail Bletsas, Chris Blizzard, Javier Cardona, Brian Cavagnolo, Ronak Chokshi, John Corbett, Alan Cunningham, Jordan Crouse, Marco Gritti, Jim Gettys, Zephaniah Hull, Ivan Krstić, Adam Jackson, Jaya Kumar, Pierre Ossman, John Palmieri, Luis Carlos Cobo Rus, Andres Salomon, Marcelo Tosatti, Dan Williams, Dave Woodhouse, David Zeuthen and the Linux and free and open software community as a whole. |
|||
9. Mitch Bradley and Richard Smith made innumerable firmware releases, and |
|||
have one ready for production this week, which is fairly stable in the face |
|||
of quite a bit of difficulty with the DCON starting up properly; the last |
|||
blocker bug for the firmware is for the EC code to address power up |
|||
problems and that BIOS is in test as this is written. The Open Firmware |
|||
release will be within a couple of days. |
|||
The window system and user interface toolkit brought to you by Jordan Crouse, Zephaniah Hull, Adam Jackson, Jim Gettys, the X Window System, GTK+, Gstreamer, and Cairo communities, along with Manu Cornet, and Matthew Allum. |
|||
10. Lilian Walker delivered to Mitch the first draft of Geode |
|||
power-management code. That code provides forth words to put the OLPC board |
|||
into various power management states: |
|||
Abiword for kids brought to you by Erik Blankinship, Justin Gallardo, J.M. Maurer, Martin Sevior and the Abiword community. |
|||
{| |
|||
|- |
|||
CSound brought to you by Barry Vercoe, Rick Boulanger, Simon Schampijer, and the CSound community. |
|||
|G0/S0/C1: ||CPU suspends upon HLT |
|||
|- |
|||
EToys brought to you on OLPC by Bert Freudenberg, Alan Kay, Yoshiki Ohshima, Andreas Raab, Kim Rose, and the entire EToys and Squeak community. Our thanks to Steve Jobs for relicensing Squeak. |
|||
|G1/S1/C2: ||Sleep |
|||
|- |
|||
PenguinTV brought to you by Owen Williams and the Gecko rendering engine of Mozilla. |
|||
|G1/S1/C3: ||Save-to-RAM |
|||
|- |
|||
Sugar brought to you by Walter Bender, Chris Blizzard, Eben Eliason, Marco Pesenti Gritti, and Lisa Strausfeld, Christian Schmidt, and the team from Pentagram. |
|||
|G1/S4: ||Save-to-disk |
|||
|- |
|||
Sugar's web browser is based on the Gecko rendering engine of the Mozilla foundation. |
|||
|G2/S5: ||Soft off |
|||
|} |
|||
TamTam and Memosono brought to you by Douglas Ec, Nathanaël Lécaudé, Bélanger Olivier, and Jean Piché. |
|||
Xbook broght to you by Tomeu Vizoso, Manusheel Gupta, and the Popplar team. |
|||
Orchestration by Walter Bender, Jim Gettys, and Chris Blizzard. |
|||
Laptop News is archived at [http://laptop.media.mit.edu/laptopnews.nsf/latest/news Laptop News]. |
Laptop News is archived at [http://laptop.media.mit.edu/laptopnews.nsf/latest/news Laptop News]. |
||
Revision as of 21:22, 18 November 2006
LAPTOP NEWS
1. Many put in Herculean efforts and as scheduled the first build of X0 was begun on Tuesday afternoon November 14th. About 35 operators assembled the laptops with the over-site of the entire technical team from Quanta and Mark Foster and Mary Lou Jepsen from OLPC and David Woodhouse from Red Hat on hand. The first laptop was started with its motherboard, and ran most of the way through the line alone —with every operator idle except for the one, each operator successively doing his or her job. After Laptop #1 had made it through about 20 operators, Laptop #2 was started. 221 laptops were built on Tuesday and an additional 600 units on Thursday; many are still in run-in and final test.
2. As part of the follow up of last week's meeting, the IADB and OLPC issued a press release regarding strategic areas of common interest: (a) regional and national policy dialog regarding adopting a new approach to the use of computers in education; (b) technical assistance; (c) design and support for evaluation activities; (d) content development tailor-made to the 1-to-1 learning environment; (e) design of effective strategies to integrate individual computer devices in the daily lives of children, both at home and in school; and (f) design of effective approaches to supporting schools and teachers implementing 1-to-1 computing programs.
2. New York: Nicholas delivered a presentation at the closing session of the United Nations' International Forum on the Eradication of Poverty on Thursday. The session included Prof. Iqbal Quadir, Founder of Grameen phone and currently the Director, Program in Developmental Entrepreneurship at MIT.
3. Santa Clara: Walter Bender gave a talk at the Silicon Valley Challenge Summit and demonstrated the laptop to the public—its first public showing.
4. Cambridge: OLPC held an all-hands meeting to review B1 status and organize our selves for the next phase of development, initial testing, and deployment. All aspects of the system were given a thorough review and critique.
5. The arrival of the machines has accelerated the software. We can finally see the fonts, test the keyboard, and feel the performance. We've already fixed a number of small bugs this week and will be able to make an update BIOS and OS image release for people to use on the B1 machines.
In short: we shipped a BIOS, a bootloader, embedded-controller code, a working Linux system with support for all devices, a new user-interface environment, along with a web browser, music programs, network manager, chat program, and word processor.
In thanking all of those who have contributed to this effort, we undoubted missed someone; our apologies for those whom we fail to mention below.
The BIOS, EC code, and bootloader were brought to you by Mitch Bradley, Ted Juan, Vance Ke, Arvin Liu, Ron Minnich, Richard Smith, Lilian Walter, Tom Sylla, Terry Su, Ray Tseng, and the LinuxBIOS team.
The base system was brought to you by the team of Chris Ball, Michail Bletsas, Chris Blizzard, Javier Cardona, Brian Cavagnolo, Ronak Chokshi, John Corbett, Alan Cunningham, Jordan Crouse, Marco Gritti, Jim Gettys, Zephaniah Hull, Ivan Krstić, Adam Jackson, Jaya Kumar, Pierre Ossman, John Palmieri, Luis Carlos Cobo Rus, Andres Salomon, Marcelo Tosatti, Dan Williams, Dave Woodhouse, David Zeuthen and the Linux and free and open software community as a whole.
The window system and user interface toolkit brought to you by Jordan Crouse, Zephaniah Hull, Adam Jackson, Jim Gettys, the X Window System, GTK+, Gstreamer, and Cairo communities, along with Manu Cornet, and Matthew Allum.
Abiword for kids brought to you by Erik Blankinship, Justin Gallardo, J.M. Maurer, Martin Sevior and the Abiword community.
CSound brought to you by Barry Vercoe, Rick Boulanger, Simon Schampijer, and the CSound community.
EToys brought to you on OLPC by Bert Freudenberg, Alan Kay, Yoshiki Ohshima, Andreas Raab, Kim Rose, and the entire EToys and Squeak community. Our thanks to Steve Jobs for relicensing Squeak.
PenguinTV brought to you by Owen Williams and the Gecko rendering engine of Mozilla.
Sugar brought to you by Walter Bender, Chris Blizzard, Eben Eliason, Marco Pesenti Gritti, and Lisa Strausfeld, Christian Schmidt, and the team from Pentagram.
Sugar's web browser is based on the Gecko rendering engine of the Mozilla foundation.
TamTam and Memosono brought to you by Douglas Ec, Nathanaël Lécaudé, Bélanger Olivier, and Jean Piché.
Xbook broght to you by Tomeu Vizoso, Manusheel Gupta, and the Popplar team.
Orchestration by Walter Bender, Jim Gettys, and Chris Blizzard.
Laptop News is archived at Laptop News.
You can subscribe to the OLPC community-news mailing list by visiting the laptop.org mailman site.
Press requests: please send email to press@laptop.org
MILESTONES
| 10 Nov. 2006 | First B1 boards are built |
| Oct. 2006 | B-test boards become available |
| Aug. 2006 | Working prototype of the dual-mode display |
| 06 Jun. 2006 | First video with working prototype [1] |
| May 2006 | A-test boards become available |
| 28 Jan. 2006 | World Economic Forum, Switzerland UNDP and OLPC Sign Partnership Agreement news release |
| 13 Dec. 2005 | Quanta Computer Inc. to Manufacture Laptop (html)(pdf) |
| 16 Nov. 2005 | WSIS, Tunisia Prototype Unveiled by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan Photos: (Image 1)
(Image 2) (Image 3) |
| Jan. 2005 | Laptop intiative officially announced at World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland |
PRESS
Video
(Misc. videos of the laptop can be found.)
http://stanford-online.stanford.edu/courses/ee380/061004-ee380-300.asx | Mark Foster delivers presentation to Standford University