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=LAPTOP NEWS=
=LAPTOP NEWS=
1. Urugwiro Village: Rwanda committed to the one laptop per child
1. B2: Electrical and mechanical improvements that will be part of the B2
initiative this week. "In recognition of children being Rwanda’s most
build include: [[CAFE ASIC]]; [[DCON]] running at the proper voltage (lower-power
precious natural resource, the government of Rwanda has committed to
consumption); anti-glare screen; touch-pad fixed; power overcharge and
provide one laptop per child to all primary school children within five
undercharge fixed; keyboard improved (including the space-bar and enter
years."--H.E. President Paul Kagame
key); new material in bumpers allowing 100cm drop; improved ribbing and
strength in housing; less wobble in the hinge; display tilt improved by 3–5
degrees; and buttons do not get stuck in housing and are easier to press.


2. Mountain View: Chris Blizzard at spent time with Vladimir Vukicevic from
2. CAFE: The [[CAFE]] [[ASIC]] is working! Marvell tested all three
Mozilla Corporation, who has done much of the Cairo (Linux graphics
functions—camera, flash, and SD controllers—with their internal diagnostic
library) integration work with Gecko (Mozilla rendering engine). They
software and the ASIC passed basic tests. We also tested CAFE with an AMD
talked about particular OLPC needs: support for 200DPI, arbitrary zooming
Geode board and regular Linux PC. Basic register read/write, data
of content, better performance and smaller size. Vladimir's claim was
read/write, and DMA transfers all passed.
“you're about a year too early.” Support for arbitrary zooming is now just
landing on the Mozilla trunk and will be stabilizing with the Gecko 1.9
branch and Firefox 3. The trunk already has better memory characteristics
and performance improvements. Over time the engine will get a lot better,
probably really landing some time in mid to late 2007, somewhat late for
us. There's already support for flushing memory caches and it is just a
question of finding the right knobs in the engine to turn when we encounter
low-memory conditions.


3. Richard Smith, John Palmeri, Mitch Bradley, Chris Ball collaborated to
3. Power management: There has been a concerted effort over the last year
build a new stable image (Build 212) to correct a serious battery
toward enabling Linux to stay idle as much of the time as possible to
overcharging problem using updated EC firmware from Quanta's team, and an
conserve power. One aspect of this are the “tickless” patches, now going
image (Build 213) produced for testing BTest-2 itself. We are asking
into mainline Linux, that eliminates a constant “tick” (traditionally
everyone to upgrade to Build 212 (See
100hz) for process scheduling in favor of doing all scheduling by computing
http://olpc.download.redhat.com/olpc/streams/development/build212/).
when next to wake the machine. Linux has been weak in this area relative
to other systems. Other aspects are fixing user-space applications that may
be doing stupid polling, as pointed out by Dave Jone's “Why user space
sucks” talk at OLS last summer (see http://lwn.net/Articles/192214/). David
Zeuthen, one of the Red Hat engineers has made major progress on making one
of the desktop key components (called “hal”) work well, and we are now able
to use it on OLPC.


4. Mitch Bradley, using a tight Forth loop doing raw reads from the new
Marcelo Tosatti, one of the Red Hat OLPC staff has recently made the
CAFE NAND, was able to achieve our target of 20 Mbytes/second transfers.
“tickless” patches work on the Geode. He's now at of order 50
This is roughly 3 times the best performance we were able to get out of the
interrupts/second and investigating further. He also cleaned up the
FPGA version.
USB-EHCI driver to stop polling and become interrupt driven, again reducing
wakeup overhead.


5. Quanta got one of the pre-B2 boards working Friday night. (Ted Juan used
4. Drivers: Marcelo also tested v3106 of the Libertas boot2 code, which
the word “booting” but didn't specify exactly what he meant.) Mitch has
should fix a number of outstanding USB problems we've observed, and tested
showed Quanta how to boot over the net, and got their USB Ethernet dongle
the updated Libertas mesh firmware.
working from the firmware.


6. Power management work is starting to pick up. Several people, including
Since we have no “legacy” DMA devices on our machine (e.g., floppy drives)
Lillian Walter, Jordan Crouse, Matthew Garrett, Marcelo Tosatti, and Jim
Marcelo also prepared a patch to recover the DMA-area memory usage, since
Gettys are looking into various aspects of it. Lilian has begun compiling a
all our devices can address all of memory directly.
list of devices for which to provide power-management code: codec, CAFE,
SD, camera, NAND flash, keyboard, and touchpad.


7. Walter Bender has cleaned up all of the keyboard maps, along with
Andres Salomon worked on the Linux kernel touch-pad driver and testing the
building a new keyboard map for Urdu. The “language key”—a feature unique
new version of the touch pad from ALPS and the EC fix from Quanta that
to the OLPC keyboard—is now enabled.
allows us to talk to the device correctly. The two samples we have in
Cambridge are working well. He has also been integrating other patches
into our system.


8. Chris Ball made improvements to two of the upstream
5. Firmware: Mitch Bradley has made very good progress on eliminating the
performance-measuring tools we use—Sysprof and Systemtap—and worked on
need for VSA (virtual systems architecture) that emulates PCI registers on
integrating Systemtap directly into the Tinderbox. Now that we have a wide
the Geode; Mitch has identified all registers that need to be set up on
set of baseline measurements for performance, Chris will concentrate on
boot or resume. (While source for VSA is available, it requires obsolete
finding improvements.
Windows tools to build and is probably unnecessary baggage.) Mitch will
start integration of this work into the firmware; we hope to do so in a
“step-wise” fashion, so that only one part of the system need change at a
time and so we can always do A-B comparisons of the changes in case
problems surface along the way.


9. Erik Blankinship, with help from the Red Hat team, has got the camera
Richard Smith tested a later version of the EC code in our firmware to fix
activity taking pictures much, much faster now (<1sec). Redesign of the
a battery overcharge problem and has prepared a version of the firmware for
activity is just about complete and the new version will be part of the
the pre-BTest-2 build that will take place next week. With the advent of
upcoming B2 build.
the CAFE ASIC, we hope to run the PCI bus at 66mhz and some pin-outs have
had to change. He has also started going through LinuxBios to audit the
POST (power-on self test) codes.


10. Ivan Krstić has set up Planet OLPC (See http://planet.laptop.org/).
Mitch Bradley and Dave Woodhouse will be in Shanghai next week for the
The Atom feed is http://planet.laptop.org/atom.xml and Ivan will be
BTest-2 board and CAFE ASIC bring-up.
upgrading our MediaWiki installations in order to provide us with per-page

RSS feeds on the wiki. He'll then create a protected page called “Community
6. SJ Klein spent some time with Rob Savoye and John Gilmore testing Gnash
News,” and repost all community-news that to that page, whose RSS feed will
on the laptops (Gnash is a GNU Flash movie player). They were able to get
be syndicated on planet.
smooth playback for both flash video and animation. A file used for stress
testing that uses over 60M of memory played slowly but without hitches. An
activity for Ming (an open-source library used to create SWF-format movies)
and Gnash may be ready for the laptops in time for B2.

With a working Flash tool-chain, it will be very easy to script new
applications and small games; and many early education tools designed to be
cross-platform by working in flash will become available to us. Rob is
taking on new staff and looking for interface developers; he wants to give
Ming a GUI and to set up a cross-compiling environment for OLPC to help
future work.

7. Python: Mamading Ceesay, who has been a long-time advocate of teaching
Python to children, has offered to curate a collection of generative Python
games. He intends to get Pygames and Childsplay to run on the laptops, and
to help others produce tutorials using the games to show children how and
why to program.


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 18:40, 6 January 2007

  This page is monitored by the OLPC team.


LAPTOP NEWS

1. Urugwiro Village: Rwanda committed to the one laptop per child initiative this week. "In recognition of children being Rwanda’s most precious natural resource, the government of Rwanda has committed to provide one laptop per child to all primary school children within five years."--H.E. President Paul Kagame

2. Mountain View: Chris Blizzard at spent time with Vladimir Vukicevic from Mozilla Corporation, who has done much of the Cairo (Linux graphics library) integration work with Gecko (Mozilla rendering engine). They talked about particular OLPC needs: support for 200DPI, arbitrary zooming of content, better performance and smaller size. Vladimir's claim was “you're about a year too early.” Support for arbitrary zooming is now just landing on the Mozilla trunk and will be stabilizing with the Gecko 1.9 branch and Firefox 3. The trunk already has better memory characteristics and performance improvements. Over time the engine will get a lot better, probably really landing some time in mid to late 2007, somewhat late for us. There's already support for flushing memory caches and it is just a question of finding the right knobs in the engine to turn when we encounter low-memory conditions.

3. Richard Smith, John Palmeri, Mitch Bradley, Chris Ball collaborated to build a new stable image (Build 212) to correct a serious battery overcharging problem using updated EC firmware from Quanta's team, and an image (Build 213) produced for testing BTest-2 itself. We are asking everyone to upgrade to Build 212 (See http://olpc.download.redhat.com/olpc/streams/development/build212/).

4. Mitch Bradley, using a tight Forth loop doing raw reads from the new CAFE NAND, was able to achieve our target of 20 Mbytes/second transfers. This is roughly 3 times the best performance we were able to get out of the FPGA version.

5. Quanta got one of the pre-B2 boards working Friday night. (Ted Juan used the word “booting” but didn't specify exactly what he meant.) Mitch has showed Quanta how to boot over the net, and got their USB Ethernet dongle working from the firmware.

6. Power management work is starting to pick up. Several people, including Lillian Walter, Jordan Crouse, Matthew Garrett, Marcelo Tosatti, and Jim Gettys are looking into various aspects of it. Lilian has begun compiling a list of devices for which to provide power-management code: codec, CAFE, SD, camera, NAND flash, keyboard, and touchpad.

7. Walter Bender has cleaned up all of the keyboard maps, along with building a new keyboard map for Urdu. The “language key”—a feature unique to the OLPC keyboard—is now enabled.

8. Chris Ball made improvements to two of the upstream performance-measuring tools we use—Sysprof and Systemtap—and worked on integrating Systemtap directly into the Tinderbox. Now that we have a wide set of baseline measurements for performance, Chris will concentrate on finding improvements.

9. Erik Blankinship, with help from the Red Hat team, has got the camera activity taking pictures much, much faster now (<1sec). Redesign of the activity is just about complete and the new version will be part of the upcoming B2 build.

10. Ivan Krstić has set up Planet OLPC (See http://planet.laptop.org/). The Atom feed is http://planet.laptop.org/atom.xml and Ivan will be upgrading our MediaWiki installations in order to provide us with per-page RSS feeds on the wiki. He'll then create a protected page called “Community News,” and repost all community-news that to that page, whose RSS feed will be syndicated on planet.

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

Jan. 2007 Rwanda announced its participation in the project.
Dec. 2006 Uruguay announced its participation in the project.
Nov. 2006 First B1 machines are built; IDB and OLPC formalize an agreement regarding Latin American and Caribbean education.
Oct. 2006 B-test boards become available; Libya announces plans for one laptop for every child
Sep. 2006 UI designs presented; integrated software build released; SES-Astra joins OLPC
Aug. 2006 Working prototype of the dual-mode display
Jun. 2006 500 developer boards are shipped worldwide; WiFi operational; Csound demonstrated over the mesh network
First video with working prototype [1]
May 2006 eBay joins OLPC; display specs set; A-test boards become available; $100 Server is announced
Apr. 2006 Pre-A test board boots; Squid and FreePlay present first human-power systems
Mar. 2006 Yves Behar and FuseProject are selected as industry designers
Feb. 2006 Marvell joins OLPC and continues to partner on network hardware
Jan. 2006 World Economic Forum, Switzerland
UNDP and OLPC Sign Partnership Agreement
news release
Dec. 2005 Quanta Computer Inc. to Manufacture Laptop
(html)(pdf)
Nov. 2005 WSIS, Tunisia
Prototype Unveiled by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan; Nortel joins OLPC

Photos: (Image 1) (Image 2) (Image 3)
Webcast: (Arabic) (English) (French) (original)
Webcast provided by the ITU and UN Webcast Services with the support of RealNetworks Ltd. RealPlayer is required to view the webcast (available at no cost).

Aug. 2005 Design Continuum starts design of first laptop
Jul. 2005 Formal signing of original members of OLPC
Mar. 2005 Brightstar and Red Hat come on board
Jan. 2005 Laptop initiative officially announced at World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland; AMD, News Corp. and Google agree to join OLPC

PRESS

3 Jan. 2007 YAHOO! Finance| OLPC Announces First-of-Its Kind User Interface for XO Laptop Computer
2 Jan. 2007 Bicyclemark's Communique (podcast)| One Laptop Per Child (@23C3)
27 Nov. 2006 Pagina/12| La manera más económica para mejorar la educación
21 Nov. 2006 Official Release|First 1,000 XO-Laptops Roll off the Assembly Line in Shanghai
19 Nov. 2006 Jamaica Gleaner| Technology - a tool for transformation
19 Nov. 2006 International Herald Tribune| One Laptop per Child: Computer designed for those who can least afford them
Nov./Dec. 2006 Technology Review| Will This Save the World? The $100 Laptop Part III
Nov./Dec. 2006 Technology Review| Will This Save the World? The $100 Laptop Part II
Nov./Dec. 2006 Technology Review| Will This Save the World? The $100 Laptop Part I
8 Nov. 2006 Popular Science| Best of What's New 2006: One Laptop per Child XO- Better Screen, Better World
6 Nov. 2006 ZDNet.co.uk | Why Every Child Deserves a Laptop- Matthew Szulik, CEO, Red Hat
27 Oct. 2006 LinuxWorld | Children's Laptop Inspires Open Source Projects
24 Oct. 2006 LA Times | Upward Mobility in a Laptop
24 Oct. 2006 Fortune | This PC wants to save the world
12 Oct. 2006 Bostonist | One Laptop per Child for Libya
11 Oct. 2006 New York Times | U.S. Group Reaches Deal to Provide Laptops to All Libyan Schoolchildren
3 Oct. 2006 GulfNews.com | College gets look at $100 Children's Laptop Computer
25 Sep. 2006 vnunet.com | OLPC offered free satellite connections
14 Sep. 2006 Vanguard | Keyboard In Three Nigerian Languages Ready-Obasanjo
08 Sep. 2006 Technology Review | Hack: The Hundred Dollar Laptop
06 Sep. 2006 nacion.com | Computadoras de $100 estarán listas en el 2007
 Aug. 2006 Wired | The Laptop Crusade
28 Aug. 2006 PCINpact.com | L'OLPC a 100 $ est finalise: un engin hors du commun
21 Aug. 2006 EWeek.com | Knocking Down Barriers to the $100 Laptop
31 Jul. 2006 NPR | Affordable Laptop Computer Project Moves Forward
07 Jul. 2006 San Diego Union-Tribune | U.S. and international educators show great interest in prototype
Jul. 2006 SPIE Professional | $100 laptop nears launch
21 Jun. 2006 BusinessWeek online | For Brazil's Poor, a Digital Deliverance?
24 May 2006 CNET News.com | $100 laptop gets working prototype
07 Apr. 2006 rediff.com | Our $100 laptops will run on human power
02 Apr. 2006 O Estado de S.Paulo | Fazer a diferença
28 Mar. 2006 FT.com | Waking up to a laptop revolution
24 Mar. 2006 Diário do Comércio | Um Laptop por Crianca
22 Mar. 2006 Times Online | Getting the world's poor logged on
09 Mar. 2006 Correio Popular | País disputa fabricação de laptop de US$ 100
  Folha de S. Paulo | Governo quer comprar 1 milhão de laptops
  Info Exame On Line | Governo quer um milhão de laptops de US$ 100
08 Mar. 2006 IDG Now | Faculdade abre programa de inclusão digital para alunos
  Folha de S. Paulo | Governo negocia fabricação do laptop de US$ 100 no Brasil
  Agência Globo | Governo estuda possibilidade de produção de computador de US$ 100 no país
  Teletime News | DVB detalha contrapartidas oferecidas ao Brasil
05 Mar. 2006 ACM/CIE | Interview with Nicholas Negroponte on the $100 laptop
16 Feb. 2006 MITIR | Podcast of Walter Bender's MURJ lecture on One Laptop per Child
15 Feb. 2006 CNET | PCs for the poor: Which design will win?
10 Feb. 2006 CNET | Perspective: Will the $100 PC fly?
09 Feb. 2006 NYTimes | A Plug for the Unplugged $100 Laptop Computer for Developing Nations
  UPI | One Laptop Project reaches critical stages
31 Jan. 2006 Slashdot | Microsoft OS Smart Phone for Developing Nations
  USA Today | Gates sees cellphones as way to help Third World
  Macworld | Red Hat officially commits to MIT's $100 laptop
20 Dec. 2005 BusinessWeek online | Quanta faces challenges in making "millions and millions" of $100 laptops.
19 Dec. 2005 Forbes.com | China to decide by March whether to join OneLaptopPerChild project.
14 Dec. 2005 UPI | Nortel to take part in OneLaptopPerChild endeavor.
13 Dec. 2005 Red Herring | Quanta to manufacture laptops; expects deliveries in 2006 4th quarter.
11 Dec. 2005 NYTimes | NY Times: 5th Annual Year in Ideas $100 Laptop
01 Dec. 2005 RFDESIGN | $100 Laptops Feature Novel Peer-to-Peer Wireless Connectivity
30 Nov. 2005 FT.com | Five companies in Asia making bids to manufacture $100 laptop.
28 Nov. 2005 Fortune Magazine | THE DIGITAL DIVIDE: I'd Like to Teach the World to Type
25 Nov. 2005 People's Daily Online | Nigerian president says government has budgeted for a million $100 laptops.
17 Nov. 2005 BBC News | UN Debut for $100 Laptop for Poor
  Seattle Times | $100 Laptops Aim to Bring Children the World
  TechWhack | MIT Unveils their USD 100 Laptop
  ZDNet | '$100 Laptops' Here by Next Year
  ABC | $100 Laptop Bridges Digital Divide
  Financial Express | Laptop @$100!
16 Nov. 2005 MIT News Office | Annan to Present Prototype $100 Laptop at World Summit on Information Society
  CNET | $100 Laptop Takes World Stage
  CNET | $100 Laptop Expected in Late 2006
  Christian Science Monitor | A Low-Cost Laptop for Every Child
14 Nov. 2005 WSJ | The $100 Laptop Moves Closer to Reality
13 Nov. 2005 The Inquirer | Hubris over $100 Laptop idea
New York Times | Google Earmarks $265million for Charity and Social Causes
13 Oct. 2005 Technology Review | The Hundred Dollar Man: Technology Review's editor in chief, Jason Pontin, talk with Nicholas Negroponte about the Hundred Dollar Computer.
29 Sep. 2005 I4U News | Sub-$100 Laptop design unveiled
28 Sep. 2005 Boston Globe | Prototypes of $100 laptop with hand crank planned by early next year.
  MIT World | NN at Technology Review
27 Sep. 2005 Datamation | Low cost PCs for the Enterprise
06 Jun. 2005 estadao.com.br | Cada criança na escola com um laptop a tiracolo

PRESS RELEASES

Jan. 2007 OLPC Announces First-of-Its-Kind User Interface for XO Laptop Computer.
Jan. 2007 Rwanda Commits to One Laptop per Child Initiative.
Dec. 2006 Low Cost Laptop Could Tranform Learning.

Video

(Misc. videos of the laptop can be found.)

http://video.globo.com/Videos/Player/Noticias/0,,GIM607884-7823-CRIANCAS+TESTAM+COMPUTADOR+PORTATIL,00.html | Crianças testam computador portátil/ Students test the laptop, GLOBO- BRASIL

http://stanford-online.stanford.edu/courses/ee380/061004-ee380-300.asx | Mark Foster delivers presentation to Standford University

http://www.technologyreview.com/ | Technology Review Mini-Documentary

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