OLPC:News: Difference between revisions
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=LAPTOP NEWS= |
=LAPTOP NEWS= |
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1. Libya and OLPC signed an MOU in which they agreed to work together towards the deployment of one OLPC laptop for every school-age child in Libya and contributing laptops to poor African nations. OLPC will provide the support needed by Libya to plan and carry out such a deployment. The signing took place during a visit by Nicholas, Walter Bender, and Khaled Hassounah, where they met with members of the newly formed OLPC4Libya steering committee. The committee was presented with the outline of a comprehensive plan to distribute the laptops, create connectivity and server infrastructure, and prepare teachers and students. Libya will send a team to the OLPC office in Cambridge to focus on software (Linux), infrastructure, and education content. |
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1. Hugh Herr and his students at the Media Lab have begun a set of |
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preliminary efficiency tests on both the Squid pull-cord generator and the |
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Freeplay crank generator. They are indirectly measuring the exertion of |
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users and directly measuring the electrical power output. |
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2. Nicholas spoke to the International Federation of University Presidents in Seoul on Thursday. Most Asian and many other universities were present. The appeal of OLPC was obvious and the talk deeply appreciated. |
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2. São Paulo: David Cavallo and others, including the secretary for |
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distance education of the national ministry, presented to TechEducation. |
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Education officials from a large number of states in Brasil attended and |
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discussed how to best bring immersive access to laptops for children in |
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their states. |
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3. Michail attended the WiMax World conference in Boston. Nortel made big news in the show announcing their strong commitment to WiMax. |
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3. Chris Blizzard and others the GNOME community hosted a two-day hacking |
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session and summit at the MIT Media Lab for GNOME in the embedded space. |
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The embedding space is becoming increasingly important to the success of |
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GNOME; representatives from Nokia, Garmin, Palmsource, and other companies |
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were all in attendance. People shared thoughts, what they were working on, |
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and what they needed to make the platform more successful. Chris gave a |
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talk about Sugar: what we're trying to do and what we're not trying to do. |
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It was food for thought for all in attendance, and there was excellent |
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feedback. |
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4. Display: The new dual-mode panels—with double the reflectance—were |
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Over the long holiday weekend, the larger GNOME Boston Summit will be held |
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hand-carried back by Mary Lou were installed successfully into the motherboard-daughter card test-sets at OLPC. With work by Jim Gettys and Walter Bender, preliminary optimal font size tests were started. A 9-point font (25 pixels) seems ideal for readability as a guideline for development. |
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at the Media Lab as well. Anywhere from 50–150 people from all over the |
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world will be in attendance talking about the latest goings on in the GNOME |
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desktop. |
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5. Taipei: Mark Foster has been working with the teams at Quanta, Marvell, and the OLPC software team to bring up a new version of the CAFE chip on the first OLPC “pre-B Test” motherboards. The boards are up and running, so the teams are now concentrating on general debugging. The motherboards are all running Linux, and all three of the CAFE subsystems (camera interface, SD Card controller, and the NAND Flash controller), are available for further driver development. |
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4. Mark Foster reports that the first sample B-Test motherboards have |
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arrived. These boards represent the first major revision of the system's |
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electronics, including: |
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6. Additionally, samples of the latest Alps touchpad are also on their way to the software team. These samples include a newer touchpad controller ASIC that is intended for final production, as well as containing the unique OLPC keyboard code functionality. This keyboard code, essentially a superset of that used by conventional PCs, provides direct support for the Sugar user interface, adds convenient shortcut keys, and enables OLPC's unique "analog slider" function keys. |
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* Designed for incorporation of the DCON (Display CONtroller) ASIC. |
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7. The OLPC document format spec rev2 has support for block macros, granular tables of contents, and layout hinting. The format is named “Crossmark,” and is believed to be highly suitable for (collaborative) book writing and editing and use as an e-book format. |
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* Direct support for the DETTL (double-edged TTL) interface used by OLPC's custom 7.5" LCD panel. The LCD interface is now fully integrated on the motherboard. |
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8. One month ago, without warning, Sun released Open Firmware under a BSD license. After much deliberation, we reached the decision that rather than continuing to use Linux itself as boot loader, we will transition to Open Firmware (OFW), while retaining LinuxBIOS. The date for a transition has not yet been set. Open Firmware has been in use on both Sun and PPC hardware (e.g. Apple) for approaching a decade, and has shipped in quantity millions. Mitch Bradley, currently working for OLPC is its original author. |
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* Incorporation of the CAFE (Camera And Flash Enabler) in FPGA form. The B-Test motherboard incorporates a new high-performance NAND Flash controller, an SD card slot, and an interface to the new VGA resolution video/still camera. |
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9. Our firmware development process and strategy has crystallized, and is a major relief to us all. Chris Ball has worked on our internal BIOS build system and procedures, setting up a Xen virtual machine containing a stable system for building the OLPC BIOS. The build system has successfully built LinuxBIOS with both Linux and Open Firmware as bootloaders. A release process has been proposed and is being reviewed. |
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* Replacement of the previous on-board wireless solution with a small daughtercard. The new wireless solution incorporates full shielding to improve RF sensitivity and range. |
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10. Chris has also established a tinderbox to enable continuous build testing and performance testing of the OLPC system, from installing firmware, booting, installation onto flash and ensuring the user interface has started. We intend to add performance tests in the future (See http://mailman.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2006-October/002565.html). |
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5. UI: Marco Gritti and Dan Williams have both been hard at work: the |
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implementation of the chat bubble overlay is underway; and the migration to |
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the HippoCanvas implementation has progressed—large parts of the UI |
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are now using it. |
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11. Jon Corbet has RGB565 mode (or native mode) working in the camera driver now. Jon will submit a new patch to the OLPC tree today. The camera driver is getting close to completion. The remaining items are support for image sizes other than VGA (which should be easy) and wiring up more controls. |
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6. Wireless: Work is progressing on the wireless driver. Both Marcelo |
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Tossati and Dan Williams have been working on the driver, fixing it up to |
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make it work as a full Linux driver. This week they spent time getting the |
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various kinds of encryption working on the hardware. Dan also spent some |
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time working on NetworkManager, getting closer to making it possible to use |
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it on our platform. |
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7. Image: We have broken the Perl dependency and the dependency on bitmap |
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fonts, freeing up much more space on the flash for user space. Some time |
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this weekend we should have images that also include the newest X server, |
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which is required for the X input-driver work. That X server has also been |
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built without a lot of modules found in desktop X servers that we don't |
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need, enabling even more space savings. |
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8. Keyboard: The team from Pentagram finalized the keyboard design for the |
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B-Test machines. Six different versions of the keyboard are being made: |
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Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish, Thai, Nigerian (for Hausa, Ìgbo, Yorùbá, Ẹdo, |
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Ẹfik, Fulani, Kanuri, etc.), and US International. |
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[[Image:Thai-keyboard.jpg|thumb|left]] |
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9. CAFE: The camera driver written by Jon Corbet is substantially complete, |
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and being merged (the camera is now running at its full 30-frames per |
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second). All of the CAFE device drivers and the kernel touchpad driver have |
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now been integrated into the OLPC development kernel source pool for |
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testing. Remaining are a battery driver and the analog input mode of the |
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codec. |
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10. Chris Ball joined the OLPC team in Cambridge and immediately tested 21 |
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A-Test boards with a variety of second source parts; one memory related |
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problem was uncovered in one of the DRAM's chosen, and problems programming |
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one of the serial ROM varieties were encountered, but not yet resolved. |
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Chris is setting up a build “tinderbox” for both basic testing of our |
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software and hardware; he is also putting the infrastructure in place to |
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monitor ongoing performance of our systems. |
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Revision as of 09:25, 14 October 2006
LAPTOP NEWS
1. Libya and OLPC signed an MOU in which they agreed to work together towards the deployment of one OLPC laptop for every school-age child in Libya and contributing laptops to poor African nations. OLPC will provide the support needed by Libya to plan and carry out such a deployment. The signing took place during a visit by Nicholas, Walter Bender, and Khaled Hassounah, where they met with members of the newly formed OLPC4Libya steering committee. The committee was presented with the outline of a comprehensive plan to distribute the laptops, create connectivity and server infrastructure, and prepare teachers and students. Libya will send a team to the OLPC office in Cambridge to focus on software (Linux), infrastructure, and education content.
2. Nicholas spoke to the International Federation of University Presidents in Seoul on Thursday. Most Asian and many other universities were present. The appeal of OLPC was obvious and the talk deeply appreciated.
3. Michail attended the WiMax World conference in Boston. Nortel made big news in the show announcing their strong commitment to WiMax.
4. Display: The new dual-mode panels—with double the reflectance—were hand-carried back by Mary Lou were installed successfully into the motherboard-daughter card test-sets at OLPC. With work by Jim Gettys and Walter Bender, preliminary optimal font size tests were started. A 9-point font (25 pixels) seems ideal for readability as a guideline for development.
5. Taipei: Mark Foster has been working with the teams at Quanta, Marvell, and the OLPC software team to bring up a new version of the CAFE chip on the first OLPC “pre-B Test” motherboards. The boards are up and running, so the teams are now concentrating on general debugging. The motherboards are all running Linux, and all three of the CAFE subsystems (camera interface, SD Card controller, and the NAND Flash controller), are available for further driver development.
6. Additionally, samples of the latest Alps touchpad are also on their way to the software team. These samples include a newer touchpad controller ASIC that is intended for final production, as well as containing the unique OLPC keyboard code functionality. This keyboard code, essentially a superset of that used by conventional PCs, provides direct support for the Sugar user interface, adds convenient shortcut keys, and enables OLPC's unique "analog slider" function keys.
7. The OLPC document format spec rev2 has support for block macros, granular tables of contents, and layout hinting. The format is named “Crossmark,” and is believed to be highly suitable for (collaborative) book writing and editing and use as an e-book format.
8. One month ago, without warning, Sun released Open Firmware under a BSD license. After much deliberation, we reached the decision that rather than continuing to use Linux itself as boot loader, we will transition to Open Firmware (OFW), while retaining LinuxBIOS. The date for a transition has not yet been set. Open Firmware has been in use on both Sun and PPC hardware (e.g. Apple) for approaching a decade, and has shipped in quantity millions. Mitch Bradley, currently working for OLPC is its original author.
9. Our firmware development process and strategy has crystallized, and is a major relief to us all. Chris Ball has worked on our internal BIOS build system and procedures, setting up a Xen virtual machine containing a stable system for building the OLPC BIOS. The build system has successfully built LinuxBIOS with both Linux and Open Firmware as bootloaders. A release process has been proposed and is being reviewed.
10. Chris has also established a tinderbox to enable continuous build testing and performance testing of the OLPC system, from installing firmware, booting, installation onto flash and ensuring the user interface has started. We intend to add performance tests in the future (See http://mailman.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2006-October/002565.html).
11. Jon Corbet has RGB565 mode (or native mode) working in the camera driver now. Jon will submit a new patch to the OLPC tree today. The camera driver is getting close to completion. The remaining items are support for image sizes other than VGA (which should be easy) and wiring up more controls.
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
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 here.)