Free Software Arm-Based 12In 1280X800 Laptop

[lkcl]

folks, hi,

some time last year i posted to see if anyone was interested in getting together, pandora-style, to bring about the creation of a full ARM-based Laptop. the discussion here turned into a 10-page monster and was generally entertaining as well as informative and useful. i'm reviving and reopening the invitation, having spent the past six months researching the best CPU options and getting some rough guides as to development costs and the BOM (bill of materials) cost.

a little more here:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/2011/01/msg00086.html
and here:
http://lkcl.net/laptop.html

the summary is this: $USD 20,000 gets a 12in 1280x800 laptop with 1gb RAM made, BOM about $160 with a DM3730 or DM3725 CPU; $USD 10,000 gets the same screen-size and same RAM, but using an S5PV210 instead, and the BOM is about $USD 150. that is a *lot* cheaper than the OpenPandora, and the reason is very simple: use an existing OEM "no-brand" laptop case, keyboard and battery! it would also be far, far quicker and far less risk (than the OpenPandora) to get it made. it would even be possible to get it done using, for example, the Beagleboard-XM but the end-product's cost would be higher (BBxMs are relatively costly) and you'd only have 512mb RAM. and difficulty adapting the BBxM to suit the donor laptop's case.

so - if anyone is interested, enough to help pay the development costs, do make yourselves known, and/or contact me directly if you're serious. and, please feel free to discuss ideas: i'm happy to explain how and why the basic specification has been picked. also: i'm reaching out to other free software forums as well, and will maintain a list of them at my web site's URL, above, so that people can easily follow those discussions as well.

l.

 

[klikklak]

instead of BB-xM you should consider Pandaboard by the same people. About the same cost, but dualcore 1ghz with 1gig memory. Anyway good luck with that, personally I'm not so interested in the laptop form factor, but many people seem to like them.

 

[Blue Protoman]

Here I was, getting ready to report you as a spam bot, then I see your post count.

 

[Exophase]

I can't think of a good reason to use DM3730 over S5PV210 if the latter is cheaper, given that it has a much better GPU.

But I still think this will be made moot by Nufront's upcoming laptops which will have much more powerful SoCs. Now, if you get a hold of those to use for a laptop instead..

EDIT: Man..

[quote name=http://lkcl.net/laptop.html](Intel's CPUs use techniques such as having 5 Floating Point
Units designed by separate teams, having them all on-board the CPU, and
asking every unit to perform the same calculation. As the units
are all by different teams, with different designs, they have different
advantages, given different ranges of inputs. The fastest to complete the
calculation is chosen, each time, and all other partial answers abandoned.
The resources wasted, all in the name of "speed"...)[/quote]

Whatever you're smoking, I want in.

 

[amishaziz]

lkcl,

I like this part:

"Costs will be further reduced by keeping to a 2-board design. The
CPU, NAND and DDR2 RAM will be on a 35x67mm 200-pin SO-DIMM, which will
need to be at least an 8-layer PCB."

Future upgrading, and end user/3rd party hacking awaits such open architecture, your proposing above (RAM/CPU etc).

Another empty connector giving access to the databus would be nice and handy, if you could position it near a blanked off section of the casing, even better.

Also a dedicated monitor/s-video out would be a bonus too.

With regards to a pre order, count me in.

PS. Battery life is important.

EDIT:
Also, please make the unit easy to open up, so we can hack it, to death, (the more off the shelf generic (and easy to get for replacement), parts the better).
Think of the old Apple ][, nice open architecture, and it soldiers on still.
Any space left in the case ask, what empty connector the users could do with, for filling at a later date.

 

[lkcl]

instead of BB-xM you should consider Pandaboard by the same people. About the same cost, but dualcore 1ghz with 1gig memory. Anyway good luck with that, personally I'm not so interested in the laptop form factor, but many people seem to like them.

really appreciated, thank you.

yes, looked at the beagleboard. the OMAP4440 is classified as a weapons-grade processor, unfortunately. that means that it requires a costly license *per* person to be shipped outside of the E.U or the U.S.A. so in the meantime, whilst TI sort themselves out, i'm investigating the phytec System-on-Module which ztsystems had them design, to great effect, to create a monster 8-blade low-power 19in rack-mounted server, recently.

l.

 

[lkcl]

I can't think of a good reason to use DM3730 over S5PV210 if the latter is cheaper, given that it has a much better GPU.

beh? oh, yeh. 50% ain't much when the CPU prices are $20 and $30 *lol*. ok, i hadn't noticed the GPU speed difference, to be honest.

But I still think this will be made moot by Nufront's upcoming laptops which will have much more powerful SoCs. Now, if you get a hold of those to use for a laptop instead..

ohhh yes. it'd be funny if they actually did a decent job. nufront's CPU is 40nm, can run at up to 2ghz, and generally kicks arse. if you recall that youtube video showing a Cortex A9 doing web browsing, side-by-side an intel atom, doing pretty much the same job at the same speed, i fell about laughing when right at the end they silently displayed a text overlay showing that the ARM Cortex A9 was only doing 500mhz. and the nufront can be 4x that

yes i'm tapping on nufront's door, saying "hellooo mamaa"

EDIT: Man..

[quote name=http://lkcl.net/laptop.html](speed, speed, speed)

Whatever you're smoking, I want in.
[/quote]

*lol*.

 

[klikklak]

the OMAP4440 is classified as a weapons-grade processor

Cooooool! Now I REALLY need to get one

 

[lkcl]

Future upgrading, and end user/3rd party hacking awaits such open architecture, your proposing above (RAM/CPU etc).

Another empty connector giving access to the databus would be nice and handy, if you could position it near a blanked off section of the casing, even better.

Also a dedicated monitor/s-video out would be a bonus too.

With regards to a pre order, count me in.

yaay, that's the spirit

well, i MAY have just managed to wangle access to a stonking Dual-Core CPU, by accident - i can't say which one right now. i'll post more when i have some firm news (and permission to say it!) yes, HDMI out is high on the list of things to make sure are there, whatever the board is.

PS. Battery life is important.

well, by using an existing ready-made laptop, which will have been designed with complete overkill in that department in order to cope with a 20w+ CPU and a 20w+ GPU, decent battery life is pretty damn easy to achieve, simply by doing ... err... nothing special subtract 35 watts from the power budget and err..

EDIT:
Also, please make the unit easy to open up, so we can hack it, to death, (the more off the shelf generic (and easy to get for replacement), parts the better).
Think of the old Apple ][, nice open architecture, and it soldiers on still.
Any space left in the case ask, what empty connector the users could do with, for filling at a later date.

well the board i have in mind is an off-the-shelf part, yes (but it's just that it's still in development for now) - meaning that yes it will have a lot of extra stuff on it. it _may_ actually be necessary for people to do a small amount of self-assembly for the first few, which will be kinda fun (ok, _i_ think it's fun to do that kind of thing )

l.

 

[lkcl]

Here I was, getting ready to report you as a spam bot, then I see your post count.

who me?? i'm flattered let me just edit the post, now that it's got past your beady eye, to include those all-important "please deposit $1m" details. purely to fund this laptop development, of course, of course. mwahahahh

 

[lkcl]

i opened up a new discussion, here:
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/60228-replicating-the-success-of-the-openpandora-discussion-v20/