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=LAPTOP NEWS= |
=LAPTOP NEWS= |
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1. Shanghai: Mark Foster reports that the first prototypes of the OLPC XO-1 |
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1. Mark Foster happily reports that the DCON ASIC is up and running, and first pass silicon is fully functional. While the chip has a few bugs that will be corrected for future builds—including higher power consumption than planned—we will be able to exercise all the planned capabilities of the chip on the B1 systems. |
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are up and running! The team hand-assembled the first 10 units to evaluate |
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the system's many custom components, to perform systems-integration |
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testing, and to ensure that the production process is solid, all in |
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preparation for next week's B1-Test build. Quanta will assemble 900 OLPC |
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machines that will be used for destructive testing and distribution to our |
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development partners. Our vision is a step closer to becoming a reality. |
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It cannot be overstated how much both the hardware and software teams have |
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2. Mark also reports that the CAFE (Camera and Flash Enabler) FPGA is now fully functional, with all three of the device subsystems working flawlessly. The camera, SD card slot, and NAND Flash controllers have not only been tested, they are fully integrated into the OLPC Linux kernel, with complete device drivers also working perfectly. Performance on the crucial NAND Flash controller—the laptop's primary storage device—is already much faster than that of the Geode, and will double again when the CAFE ASIC arrives. Many thanks to the great work by the CAFE team at Marvell, as well as the software team who pulled off the necessary device drivers in record time. |
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poured their hearts and souls into reaching this milestone. Kudos to all of |
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them. |
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2. Washington: IX Reunión Hemisférica de la Red de Educación is the annual |
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3. For B1 we plan to use a Linux 2.6.19 OLPC kernel with a Red Hat Fedora Core 6 run-time environment; this is lower risk than combining our own work with Fedora changes that might affect us that would not be of benefit. |
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gathering of the vice ministers of education from Central and South America |
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at the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB). They hold an open discussion |
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about the most critical issues that they are facing; topics are suggested |
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by vice ministers themselves—this year they asked that one laptop per child |
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be the theme of their meeting. Nicholas, Walter Bender, Antonio Battro, and |
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David Cavallo presented at the meeting. |
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3. The cover story of this month's Technology Review is an article about |
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4. Chris Blizzard reports that this was an exciting week for the software team. On the UI front we've had a lot of progress. Marco Gritti has moved from working on the shell and presentation bits to getting ready to start taking community contributions. This means starting on the parts of the code that allow anyone to build and deploy an activity that they have built. |
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OLPC, “Will This Save the World? The $100 Laptop.” The eight-page article |
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highlights both our technological innovations and our model of |
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“enterprising philanthropy”—an analogy is made to Andrew Carnegie's |
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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 |
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efficiently and productively. Technology Review also filmed interviews with |
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Nicholas, Walter, and Seymour Papert, which will appear on the Video |
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Section of their website, www.techreview.com. |
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4. An ultraviolet-exposure (UV) test chamber has been built and exposure |
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The B1 build will include basic support for: |
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tests are underway; however, we expect no problem on this. Why? The |
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* Chat |
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polarizer—newly selected this week—has extremely low UV transmission to the |
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* Web Browser |
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liquid crystal (0.1% throughput in the 310–400nm). Further data on the |
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* Demo Sketching Program |
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liquid crystal was provided by Merck suggesting that it is extremely |
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* Etoys |
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resistant to UV damage. UV blocker has been added to the plastics in the |
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* TamTam (for creating sounds) |
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housing to make it more robust in UV. To be safe, we are testing anyway. |
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* Musical Memory Game |
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* Xbook PDF reader |
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5. Jim Gettys and Chris Blizard report that this week has been incredibly |
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Community work going on as well: we are starting to see activity builds of Abiword (a popular document editor and our probably route to supporting Microsoft document types), and an RSS reader called PenguinTV. |
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busy for the software team. We have “frozen” for our alpha software release |
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for the B1 machines, although it being an alpha release, "the ice is |
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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 |
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game, and eToys in the base system. Numerous other applications and demos |
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will be in a repository where they can be readily downloaded. |
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6. Pierre Ossman, the secure digital host controller interface (SDHCI) |
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5. Chris also reports that we made a lot of positive changes in the OS images this week as well. We've moved from the upstream Fedora kernels to our own builds to enable closer collaboration and faster turn around on builds. This won't work over the long term but it has enabled us to work faster and smarter in our current mode of development. |
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Linux driver maintainer, and Andres Salomon worked on testing SD on CAFE, |
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which has been released for tape-out. Together they got high-speed mode |
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working for some cards. Some patches made it into the official OLPC-2.6 git |
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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 |
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until we get the CAFE ASIC back. |
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7. Jon Corbet continued working on the camera driver, which can now support |
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6. [[Crossmark]], OLPC's lightweight markup language, has a dual purpose: in the strict sense, it's a markup for (collaborative) authoring environments such as our wiki and blogs; at the same time, it serves as an actual document format, suitable for use in the e-book reader, as well as for conversion to other output formats. Crossmark is designed to be read and written by humans, and only incidentally by computers, although it is parsable unambiguously. Crossmark draft-4 has received positive feedback from community and publishers, mostly trivial changes and clarifications are being incorporated into what will become draft-5 next week. |
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multiple image sizes including QVGA. Last to come, probably not before B1, |
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will be hooking up the brightness and hue/saturation controls; this is due |
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to lack of timely response from Omnivision—the requested information only |
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arrived Friday evening. Andres merged Jon's latest updates into the OLPC |
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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. |
|||
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. |
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9. Mitch Bradley and Richard Smith made innumerable firmware releases, and |
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have one ready for production this week, which is fairly stable in the face |
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of quite a bit of difficulty with the DCON starting up properly; the last |
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blocker bug for the firmware is for the EC code to address power up |
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problems and that BIOS is in test as this is written. The Open Firmware |
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release will be within a couple of days. |
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10. Lilian Walker delivered to Mitch the first draft of Geode |
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power-management code. That code provides forth words to put the OLPC board |
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into various power management states: |
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{| |
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|- |
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|G0/S0/C1: ||CPU suspends upon HLT |
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|- |
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|G1/S1/C2: ||Sleep |
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|- |
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|G1/S1/C3: ||Save-to-RAM |
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|- |
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|G1/S4: ||Save-to-disk |
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|- |
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|G2/S5: ||Soft off |
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|} |
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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]. |
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=MILESTONES= |
=MILESTONES= |
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{| |
{| |
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|align="right" valign="top"|10 Nov. 2006 |
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|First B1 boards are built |
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|- |
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|align="right" valign="top"|Oct. 2006 |
|align="right" valign="top"|Oct. 2006 |
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Revision as of 17:18, 11 November 2006
LAPTOP NEWS
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.
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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
| G0/S0/C1: | CPU suspends upon HLT |
| G1/S1/C2: | Sleep |
| G1/S1/C3: | Save-to-RAM |
| G1/S4: | Save-to-disk |
| G2/S5: | Soft off |
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 at laptop dot 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