OLPC:News: Difference between revisions

From OLPC
Jump to navigation Jump to search
No edit summary
Line 4: Line 4:


=LAPTOP NEWS=
=LAPTOP NEWS=
1. Cambridge MA and Cambridge England: Chris Ball talked with Dafydd
“Our strategic goal is all children should access to communications
Harries and Robert McQueen of Collabora, exchanging smooth audio and video
knowledge within a frame of equality.” -- President Tabaré Vázquez
(15FPS) using the XO (See
http://www.robot101.net/2006/12/12/telepathy-and-olpc/).


2. Jean Piché and the TamTam team spent much of last week at OLPC in
1. President Tabaré Vázquez officially announced his and the country's
Cambridge. They are making steady progress toward a comprehensive
intention to enter into OLPC and to provide every child in Uruguay with a
three-stage music suite: a multi-voice instrument (an early version is
laptop within two years. He was joined by the minister of industry and
already part of the current build); a composition tool; and a synthesizer.
mines, the vice-president, the minister of education, and the president of
All three activities will be mesh-enabled, allowing children to create
LATU (the national coordinator for OLPC). He invited a group of
synchronous multi-laptop music.
schoolchildren to unveil a B1 machine for the gathering. He stated this
would be by far the greatest accomplishment of his administration. He ended
with a story of how when he was a child, growing up poor and attending
public school, when they would see a big car driving down the street, they
knew that they had the opportunity to achieve and even to become a doctor
and then president, as he did. However, he says now these poor children
know they do NOT have that opportunity. It has become no longer possible.
OLPC changes that and restores this opportunity, enabling any child to
learn and to become what she or he desires. The link to the text of the
address (in Spanish) is:
http://www.presidencia.gub.uy/_Web/noticias/2006/12/2006121402.htm


3. Performance metrics: Chris Ball prepared system-wide profiling data in
2. Brasilia: The Brazilian government convened a new educational strategic
the build image for several hotspots: rendering a web page; starting a
advisory group composed of the many experienced people who have done
Sugar activity; starting the X Window System. This profiling work will
innovative work on computers and learning, some of whom for more than 25
guild our performance efforts.
years. Some of them worked with Paulo Freire and Jean Piaget, and one, Jose
Valente, was a student of Seymour Papert and Marvin Minsky at the MIT AI
Lab. The group was unanimous and effusive in its support for the OLPC
concept and is committed to helping the government on all aspects towards a
successful deployment.


4. Kernel/drivers: Andres Salomon hand-merged various Libertas fixes
3. Håkon Wium Lie reports that the Opera browser is now running nicely on a
(Marvell's wireless driver). He also enabled PREEMPT in our kernels; the
B1 machine (Instructions can be found on our wiki at
goal is to hopefully give the machine a more interactive feel, even when
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Web_Browser).
the system is doing lots of work. This should make the people working with
sound applications happier as well, as they've been asking for a lower
latency kernel.


5. Firmware: Mitch Bradley reports that Q2A71 BIOS and firmware were
4. This week Marco Gritti and Dan Williams started work on the Journal
released this week.
implementation, based on the design work that was done during the previous
week. This includes the beginning of the UI and the underlying storage
framework.


6. Content repository: Ian Bicking spent two productive days at OLPC. He
5. Wireless: Work continues on the wireless driver. Marcelo Tosatti has
and SJ discussed our internal content repository and content
been fixing more association and scan hangs and is pretty close to getting
representations, and three related applications: (1) a public “web app”
the driver upstream. He's also cleaned out a large amount of unused code.
interface to our repository; (2) internal interfaces to the same for system
Once that driver is in a workable state, Marcelo will be spending time
administrators and children, and (3) the Journal interface. The upshot of
working on the out of memory problems that will eventually rear its head
this is a developing draft of a definition of content and modules, use
and how we handle that at an application level.
cases for the repository, and a description of an external community site
and portal to support content collaboration (as a way of describing what
the repository is not doing and also motivation for anyone interested in
filling that gap).


7. Matthew Garrett posted a first patch at resume code for the OLPC for
6. John got a lot of work done on the images as well. We've moved to the
comment and review.
current set of Fedora Core 6 updates and we've got a new kernel in our
builds. We've also got builds of the new Cairo and Pango packages and
we're going to see if they make a difference in the rendering performance
on the machine.


8. James Cameron did some initial range tests of the mesh in the Australian
7. Boot time: Chris Blizzard spent some time learning about the device
outback (See
manager that we use on the machine. There is a lot of room for
http://mailman.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2006-December/003240.html).
optimization: during startup this segment takes about 15–20 seconds to
start up; it is possible we can get that down to 2–5 seconds. In addition,
Chris has also done some investigation in how much time it takes to start
up the other services that are required on the machine. In conjunction
with the work that David Zeuthen continues to do, a 30-second startup time
is not unreasonable.

8. The news from the AMD team is excellent process on the X driver; e.g.,
it now supports dynamic rotation of the screen. In the process, Jordan
Crouse extensively cleaned up the driver; he fixed memory allocation,
improved setting the mode, fixed debug messages, etc.

9. Performance is now becoming high priority. Chris Ball has updated the
tinderbox to work with our B-test setup, and added tinderbox tests to log
boot time (tracking times for each of LinuxBIOS –> OFW –> kernel –> init –>
X), and to run Python and Cairo benchmarks, to give us a baseline ahead of
adding Cairo and Python performance improvements.

10. Andres Salomon merged 2.6.19.1 into the olpc-2.6 tree. We don't have it
in an image yet, but it appears to run just fine. He also finally fixed Bug
520 (No keyboard or mouse input under Qemu or VMWare) and the
i8042-looping-infinitely bug (with a proper fix, not a workaround),
released a new kernel, and had j5 incorporate it into Build 196. He has
discussed the issue with upstream: the proper fix is not upstream yet, but
we're pushing for it to get in now that they're aware that the bug actually
affects people (us), and that it doesn't seem to break anything else.

11. Firmware: Mitch Bradley made lots of progress on firmware startup and
power management, which are integrally related due to the common
requirement of Geode MSR setup. You have to do about 300 MSR accesses in
order to get the two Geode chips configured after any kind of power-up or
wakeup. LinuxBIOS was taking about 7 seconds to get everything initialized
before it jumped into Open Firmware. Mitch has that early startup time down
to much less than a second (too fast to measure with a stopwatch), and has
implemented a firmware fastpath boot scheme that cold-boots into the Linux
startup sequence in about 2 seconds (from NAND). That time is down from 23
seconds.

12. Fastboot requires a special boot partition on NAND. There are three
reasonable approaches for partitioning; the current front-runner is a
straightforward partitioning scheme recommended by David Woodhouse, the
same scheme used by the RedBoot loader.

13. The MSR init sequence that is common to both cold boot and
resume-from-RAM (or disk) is down to about 300 microseconds. At this point
Mitch thinks the PLL startup time is going to dominate the resume-from-RAM
time. So far Mitch hasn't found any unresolvable impediment to our goal of
super fast suspend/resume.

14. Mitch also has OFW working in virtual mode (doesn't require fixed ram
addresses) so that, if we choose, OFW can stay resident after Linux starts.
The virtual-mode version is also useful for integrating device-tree support
into Linux. A friend of Mitch's is working on porting the PowerPC Linux
device-tree support into the x86 world.

15. We released a firmware version with the new A62 EC bits from Quanta.

16. Mitch did some performance testing on the Linux start up. It appears
that booting from USB is quite a bit faster than booting from NAND. Just
counting the Linux time, USB gets to Sugar in 70 seconds, whereas NAND
takes 105 seconds. The slowdown is more apparent after the X startup
initiates, suggesting that X+Sugar is more I/O bound than core Linux. This
shows CAFE in ASIC form in BTest-2 and beyond will also improve start up
time. In its current FPGA form, CAFE is significantly faster than the
Geode's built in flash controller was, but still only a fraction of what
the ASIC's performance will enable.

17. Chris Ball tested/described the upgrade procedure from A-Test using
Mitch's updater. He tested our OFW-over-Ethernet (telnet) path with Mitch,
using it to debug a board with a bad DCON; this will help for other
failures, since we cannot use serial at the moment.


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 14:23, 23 December 2006

  This page is monitored by the OLPC team.


LAPTOP NEWS

1. Cambridge MA and Cambridge England: Chris Ball talked with Dafydd Harries and Robert McQueen of Collabora, exchanging smooth audio and video (15FPS) using the XO (See http://www.robot101.net/2006/12/12/telepathy-and-olpc/).

2. Jean Piché and the TamTam team spent much of last week at OLPC in Cambridge. They are making steady progress toward a comprehensive three-stage music suite: a multi-voice instrument (an early version is already part of the current build); a composition tool; and a synthesizer. All three activities will be mesh-enabled, allowing children to create synchronous multi-laptop music.

3. Performance metrics: Chris Ball prepared system-wide profiling data in the build image for several hotspots: rendering a web page; starting a Sugar activity; starting the X Window System. This profiling work will guild our performance efforts.

4. Kernel/drivers: Andres Salomon hand-merged various Libertas fixes (Marvell's wireless driver). He also enabled PREEMPT in our kernels; the goal is to hopefully give the machine a more interactive feel, even when the system is doing lots of work. This should make the people working with sound applications happier as well, as they've been asking for a lower latency kernel.

5. Firmware: Mitch Bradley reports that Q2A71 BIOS and firmware were released this week.

6. Content repository: Ian Bicking spent two productive days at OLPC. He and SJ discussed our internal content repository and content representations, and three related applications: (1) a public “web app” interface to our repository; (2) internal interfaces to the same for system administrators and children, and (3) the Journal interface. The upshot of this is a developing draft of a definition of content and modules, use cases for the repository, and a description of an external community site and portal to support content collaboration (as a way of describing what the repository is not doing and also motivation for anyone interested in filling that gap).

7. Matthew Garrett posted a first patch at resume code for the OLPC for comment and review.

8. James Cameron did some initial range tests of the mesh in the Australian outback (See http://mailman.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2006-December/003240.html).

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

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

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

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

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

Retrieved from "http://wiki.laptop.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=OLPC:News&oldid=18811"