OLPC:News: Difference between revisions
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=LAPTOP NEWS= |
=LAPTOP NEWS= |
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1. Nicholas, Khaled Hassounah, Michail Bletsas, SJ Klein, and Stephen |
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1. Aloizio Mercadante, the candidate for governor of Sao Paulo from President Lula's party, announced his intention to provide One Laptop per Child in the state, if elected. |
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Michaud participated in Nigeria's two-day Digital Africa Conference, with |
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one or the other of them being the keynote speaker, chairman, or panelist |
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literally in every session. OLPC was omnipresent in the press and for the |
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400 delegates from 30 countries. |
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2. Alan Kay, Kim Rose, and the eToys team spent the week in Cambridge at |
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2. Ivan Krstić will present our security model and strategy at a security conference in Malaysia to gather feedback from the security community, particularly about our intended use of IPv6 networking on the laptops. |
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the OLPC offices. They continue to make rapid progress towards the |
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integration of eToys into the laptop software environment (they also |
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provided useful feedback) and have eToys running on the laptop. Ian |
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Piumarta gave the OLPC team an update on his “dynamically reconfigurable |
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virtual machine”, which may be—in the longer term—the basis of programming |
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environment for the Laptop, in that it is simple, fast, extremely flexible |
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and quite eloquent. |
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3. Welcome Jenn Lucien to OLPC. Jenn will be working with the |
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3. After several minor iterations, the OLPC document format is close to stabilized, and the release of a Version 1 is expected shortly. The release will be largely or completely compatible with the upcoming WikiCreole specification, an attempt at a standard subset of wiki markup that wiki systems can support in addition to their native markup. |
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administrative team and covering the reception area. Originally from O`ahu, |
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she served as the office manager to the Hawai`i Legislative Committee on |
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Energy and Environmental Protection for five years. She spent the last year |
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traveling in Asia and the Pacific and is excited join a project that aims |
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to help the developing world. She holds a BA in Communication Studies from |
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University of California at Santa Barbara. |
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4. Mark Foster reports that the CAFE ASIC debugging has proceeded well |
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4. With LinuxBIOS' deployment came reports of problems booting certain A-Test boards. As a result of excellent detective work by Tom Sylla, Jordan Crouse, Ron Minnich, Richard Smith, and Chris Ball, the problem was localized to boards that have a particular vendor's DRAM—three vendor's DRAM are being qualified—that was slower than the DRAM used from the other vendors. |
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beyond expectations. To begin with, all three subsystems (NAND Flash, SD |
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card slot, and camera controller) were already functional, with full DMA |
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capability, by the time of the scheduled CAFE FPGA debugging /start/ date. |
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Following the very successful debugging sessions by the software team, the |
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CAFE is being enhanced to improve its capabilities and to simplify software |
|||
development and robustness. As one example, the SD card controller is being |
|||
modified to strictly match the public SDHCI specification. To the best of |
|||
our knowledge, this should be the first truly Open Source SD |
|||
implementation, with no need to obtain an SDI license or sign NDAs to |
|||
create SD drivers or applications. |
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5. Mark also reports that the team has decided to extend support for USB |
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2.0. Initially, the Laptop was designed to offer support for limited power |
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consumption USB devices in order to ensure sufficient battery life. After |
|||
real-world experience with the prototype systems, it has been decided to |
|||
remove this artificial power limitation and support full 2.5W power |
|||
consumption on each of the three USB ports simultaneously, or even higher |
|||
power consumption per port when all three ports are not being used (in |
|||
fact, going beyond the power limits of the USB specification). These |
|||
changes should significantly expand the universe of supported USB devices |
|||
and peripherals. |
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6. Jim Gettys reports that Carl-Daniel Hailfinger and the LinuxBIOS team |
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have implemented the LZMA compression system |
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(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZMA) for the BIOS ROM, resulting in a |
|||
substantial savings in size. |
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7. Zephaniah Hull got the X driver for the touchpad functioning last |
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weekend. Andres Salomon started contracting with OLPC this week and worked |
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with |
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Jim on setting up an X Window System build environment for debugging the |
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touchpad. Next: experimentation on how to use the novel capabilities of the |
|||
device. |
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8. John Zulauf, formerly of AMD's Geode team, has worked with AMD to free |
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the optimization work—100–200% improvement—he did on many basic library |
|||
functions: memcmp; memcpy; memset; strcmp; strcpy; and strlen. We look |
|||
forward to integrating these performance improvements. |
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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]. |
||
Revision as of 21:19, 16 September 2006
LAPTOP NEWS
1. Nicholas, Khaled Hassounah, Michail Bletsas, SJ Klein, and Stephen Michaud participated in Nigeria's two-day Digital Africa Conference, with one or the other of them being the keynote speaker, chairman, or panelist literally in every session. OLPC was omnipresent in the press and for the 400 delegates from 30 countries.
2. Alan Kay, Kim Rose, and the eToys team spent the week in Cambridge at the OLPC offices. They continue to make rapid progress towards the integration of eToys into the laptop software environment (they also provided useful feedback) and have eToys running on the laptop. Ian Piumarta gave the OLPC team an update on his “dynamically reconfigurable virtual machine”, which may be—in the longer term—the basis of programming environment for the Laptop, in that it is simple, fast, extremely flexible and quite eloquent.
3. Welcome Jenn Lucien to OLPC. Jenn will be working with the administrative team and covering the reception area. Originally from O`ahu, she served as the office manager to the Hawai`i Legislative Committee on Energy and Environmental Protection for five years. She spent the last year traveling in Asia and the Pacific and is excited join a project that aims to help the developing world. She holds a BA in Communication Studies from University of California at Santa Barbara.
4. Mark Foster reports that the CAFE ASIC debugging has proceeded well beyond expectations. To begin with, all three subsystems (NAND Flash, SD card slot, and camera controller) were already functional, with full DMA capability, by the time of the scheduled CAFE FPGA debugging /start/ date. Following the very successful debugging sessions by the software team, the CAFE is being enhanced to improve its capabilities and to simplify software development and robustness. As one example, the SD card controller is being modified to strictly match the public SDHCI specification. To the best of our knowledge, this should be the first truly Open Source SD implementation, with no need to obtain an SDI license or sign NDAs to create SD drivers or applications.
5. Mark also reports that the team has decided to extend support for USB 2.0. Initially, the Laptop was designed to offer support for limited power consumption USB devices in order to ensure sufficient battery life. After real-world experience with the prototype systems, it has been decided to remove this artificial power limitation and support full 2.5W power consumption on each of the three USB ports simultaneously, or even higher power consumption per port when all three ports are not being used (in fact, going beyond the power limits of the USB specification). These changes should significantly expand the universe of supported USB devices and peripherals.
6. Jim Gettys reports that Carl-Daniel Hailfinger and the LinuxBIOS team have implemented the LZMA compression system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZMA) for the BIOS ROM, resulting in a substantial savings in size.
7. Zephaniah Hull got the X driver for the touchpad functioning last weekend. Andres Salomon started contracting with OLPC this week and worked with Jim on setting up an X Window System build environment for debugging the touchpad. Next: experimentation on how to use the novel capabilities of the device.
8. John Zulauf, formerly of AMD's Geode team, has worked with AMD to free the optimization work—100–200% improvement—he did on many basic library functions: memcmp; memcpy; memset; strcmp; strcpy; and strlen. We look forward to integrating these performance improvements.
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
| Aug. 2006 | Working prototype of the dual-mode display |
| 06 Jun. 2006 | First video with working prototype [1] |
| 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 here.)