OLPC:News

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  This page is monitored by the OLPC team.


LAPTOP NEWS

1. B2: Electrical and mechanical improvements that will be part of the B2 build include: CAFE ASIC; DCON running at the proper voltage (lower-power consumption); anti-glare screen; touch-pad fixed; power overcharge and undercharge fixed; keyboard improved (including the space-bar and enter 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. CAFE: The CAFE ASIC is working! Marvell tested all three functions—camera, flash, and SD controllers—with their internal diagnostic software and the ASIC passed basic tests. We also tested CAFE with an AMD Geode board and regular Linux PC. Basic register read/write, data read/write, and DMA transfers all passed.

3. Power management: There has been a concerted effort over the last year toward enabling Linux to stay idle as much of the time as possible to conserve power. One aspect of this are the “tickless” patches, now going into mainline Linux, that eliminates a constant “tick” (traditionally 100hz) for process scheduling in favor of doing all scheduling by computing 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.

Marcelo Tosatti, one of the Red Hat OLPC staff has recently made the “tickless” patches work on the Geode. He's now at of order 50 interrupts/second and investigating further. He also cleaned up the USB-EHCI driver to stop polling and become interrupt driven, again reducing wakeup overhead.

4. Drivers: Marcelo also tested v3106 of the Libertas boot2 code, which should fix a number of outstanding USB problems we've observed, and tested the updated Libertas mesh firmware.

Since we have no “legacy” DMA devices on our machine (e.g., floppy drives) Marcelo also prepared a patch to recover the DMA-area memory usage, since all our devices can address all of memory directly.

Andres Salomon worked on the Linux kernel touch-pad driver and testing the new version of the touch pad from ALPS and the EC fix from Quanta that 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.

5. Firmware: Mitch Bradley has made very good progress on eliminating the need for VSA (virtual systems architecture) that emulates PCI registers on the Geode; Mitch has identified all registers that need to be set up on boot or resume. (While source for VSA is available, it requires obsolete 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.

Richard Smith tested a later version of the EC code in our firmware to fix a battery overcharge problem and has prepared a version of the firmware for the pre-BTest-2 build that will take place next week. With the advent of 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.

Mitch Bradley and Dave Woodhouse will be in Shanghai next week for the BTest-2 board and CAFE ASIC bring-up.

6. SJ Klein spent some time with Rob Savoye and John Gilmore testing Gnash on the laptops (Gnash is a GNU Flash movie player). They were able to get 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 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

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

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