mali
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^ Yep, it's been heard of. If you want to discuss it, please create a new thread in "Other Consoles" if there isn't one already. Let's leave this thread to the OP, he might want to bump it, if he has new info.
Help Needed Replicating Success Of Openpandora For A Netbook/laptop
- Thread starter lkcl
- Start date
Kangal said:
ok, unfortunately, the level of expertise required to create such machines, using GPUs / accelerated graphics chips, is beyond the average small hardware design team's capabilities. not to mention the fact that these CPUs are Intel CPUs, who will demand NDAs be signed.
plus, such products already exist: there isn't any point in making what already exists. and, you have forgotten that for x86 CPUs you need a BIOS.
plus, also, the power consumption is ten times larger than for ARM CPUs (at 10-15 watts) which means that you now have to put in either a heat-pipe, or a massive heat-sink, or design in fans etc.
plus, the design of the x86 CPUs require a separate Northbridge, separate Southbridge, PCI-e controllers, PCI controllers, SATA controllers and so on. the IC manufacturers of these components REFUSE to talk to "small fry", and if they do, they deliberately jack up the price ten-fold just to get you to go away.
so now you're in to a significant design effort, the product is highly risky, there's almost zero chance that it will be competitively priced when compared to a bog-standard laptop from Dell...
so, i'm sorry to have to say this, but the person who said that "you missed the point" is not incorrect: you have in fact entirely missed the point.
by utilising components where the total power consumption (exclusive of screen) will be somewhere around the 2-3 watts mark, and where the screen will be no more than 2 to 4 watts, you no longer need to have fans, or in fact heat sinks of any kind; you can use smaller batteries or you can put in same-sized batteries and get far more out of them.
by utilising embedded ARM CPUs which have on-board 3D accelerated graphics (in some cases), on-board 2D accelerated graphics (in some cases), on-board LCD-out, on-board HDMI-out, on-board USB2, on-board Ethernet (in some cases), on-board SATA (in some cases), on-board Audio (in some cases), on-board IDE - PATA (usually up to mode 6), on-board SDIO/MMC (usually two), and a ton of GPIO pins (obviating the need for a memory-addressable or PCI or ATA GPIO/keyboard controller IC), you've drastically reduced the design effort, drastically reduced the risk, power consumption, component count and BOM cost.
if you design the CPU board as an SO-DIMM (like yuli magniel's OMAPMOD - look it up at http://magniel.com/omapmod.html ) you can do that as an 8-layer (or more) board, which is expensive, but is is _small_, so the cost is reduced. and it can plug in to a motherboard which is only 2-layer or 4-layer (which is very very cheap). if you had to do the _entire_ board at 10cm x 20cm as an 8-layer or 10-layer board, it would be an expensive motherboard!
designing a 2-layer or a 4-layer board, you could even use free software design packages for that: geda, kicad etc. because the maximum speed you're dealing with is only around 400mhz (the speed of USB-2, and that's only 4 lines). the tricky bit is getting the paths between the CPU and the memory right, and that's taken care of in an SO-DIMM, which is of course separate from the main motherboard and you can pay specialists with the right experience to take care of just that one part. people who know that when you go above 600mhz you _seriously_ have to take into account EM radiation and cross-talk between the memory and the CPU, and who are aware that the timings and the lengths of the DDR2 bus tracks are absolutely absolutely critical, so they either know what they are doing or they have £5k's worth of PCB design software which tells them what to do (e.g. ORCAD).
i hate to think what the design would look like if you had to do a northbridge, southbridge, PCI-express, SATA controller (1.5ghz+), it would be a complete nightmare for a small design team to handle. ARM-based designs are really drastically drastically simpler and much much less of a risk.
so you see how radically different the designs are? one can be done pretty much only by intel (who sell "reference designs") or by very very large motherboard designers with deep pockets, and the other can pretty much be done by a single average skilled PCB designer / electronics engineer within a few months.
l.
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Kangal said:
yes. it's a great machine, if you want only a 600mhz CPU, 512mb RAM and can tolerate a 1024x600 screen. my threshold, and the threshold for many people i've talked to, is 800mhz+ on the CPU, 1gb RAM (DDR2), and a 1024x768 screen or greater (so, 1024x768 is ok, 1200x768 is ok, as is 1280x768, and 1366x768, and 1280x800 etc. etc.)
1024x600 screens are completely intolerable, as virtually all desktop applications are designed for a minimum of 1024x768. desktop bar: 32 pixels. application border: 10 pixels. application grabber bar with the x and _ on it: 32 pixels. Menu bar: 32 pixels. Firefox "URL bar": 32 pixels. Firefox "Bookmarks bar": 32 pixels. Firefox "Tab bar": 32 pixels. Firefox "Status bar": 32 pixels.
add those up - what have you got? (runs python....) 234 pixels!! for f***'s sake, that's nearly 40% of the screen space utilised by f*****g toolbars! no wonder people keep hitting page-up, page-down all the time. now you add back in those extra 168 pixels, divide 234 / 768 and that comes out at 30% "wasted" space. you see how significant those measly 168 pixels are?
it's the same story with openoffice, in fact much worse because you have a limited number of ways you can organise the toolbars...
oh, and tons of dialog boxes are simply too large: they go off the screen and you cannot hit the cancel or OK buttons.
oh, and it doesn't help if you customise the fonts of the desktop to 8px or less because then everything is completely unreadable.
so the world's shunting out s**t hardware that is guaranteed to be terribly frustrating for the users, just because the cost of that one component is $32 in mass-volume and the next resolution up, at the same size, is $55 to $60.
l.
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bobc said:
no: it needs someone to publicise it. the people i spoke to who would be appropriate (respected free software community leaders) took some "getting used to" the idea of a self-funding project to the tune of getting on upwards of $USD 1m
so i'm kinda relying on common sense and straw polls, and particularly from comments here, all of which point to definitely 1ghz or above, ARM Cortex A8 or above, 1gb DDR2 RAM all on a replaceable/upgradeable SO-DIMM, and then 10in to 11in LCD (for power reasons), an approximately 1280x768 LCD, built-in WIFI, perhaps space for USB dongles (inside) and _perhaps_ an SATA controller and room for an optional 2.5in SATA drive. oh - and a decent keyboard, and a big enough battery to do last at least 8 hours. puts the whole BOM somewhere around the $150 mark, but that can't be helped.l.
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Make it a dual-core Cortex-A9 and I'd pay upwards of $200, no problem.lkcl said:no: it needs someone to publicise it. the people i spoke to who would be appropriate (respected free software community leaders) took some "getting used to" the idea of a self-funding project to the tune of getting on upwards of $USD 1m
l.
Also, I think you could probably skip the internal-dongle thing - it would save space, and external USB storage is pretty small these days (if nothing else, you can get a MicroSD reader about the size of a thumbnail and use that for expandable storage). Having SATA would be amazing, though.
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Tom` said:Make it a dual-core Cortex-A9 and I'd pay upwards of $200, no problem.
Also, I think you could probably skip the internal-dongle thing - it would save space, and external USB storage is pretty small these days (if nothing else, you can get a MicroSD reader about the size of a thumbnail and use that for expandable storage). Having SATA would be amazing, though.
if you can find a CPU manufacturer willing _right_ now to release specs including full data sheets and i mean full data sheets, not the time-wasting "blurb" i mean the full 250-page complete and total and accurate technical datasheet...
... WITHOUT requiring an NDA to be signed, then yes, absolutely.
regarding the internal-dongle thing: a 10in case is so rattling around with empty space because the motherboard is so small (no heatsink, no fan, and virtually all "integrated" peripherals, remember?) that there's more than enough room to fit internal USB dongles. there are even 7in MIDs i've seen from chinese manufacturers that manage to pull this off.
and yes, most ARM Cortex A8 CPUs these days come with at least two, sometimes three SD interfaces. usually, one is connected to the NAND flash (it's easier to do that way than it is to double-connect both NAND and DDR2 to the memory bus), and another to a micro SD slot. The Plan however is to follow the OpenPandora's lead, make one of them connect to a Micro SD slot on the PCBA (SO-DIMM), and run the 2nd one off the SO-DIMM connector, for connection to an external (standard-sized) SD slot.
thought about running 2 off (if there's a 3rd) but even at 200 pins you're running out of pins. the usual problem with embedded designs (you should see how many GPIOs the HTC Universal has...)
mentioned before but the other idea floated is to connect one of the recent 300mhz TI ARM CPUs (which has an SATA interface) back-to-back on the general-purpose 16-bit memory bus. for the sake of $7 or so you end up with a ton of extra I/O on the motherboard, including 10/100 ethernet, more USB2, more SDIO and so on. the only thing is: someone has to write linux kernel drivers for the main CPU, and virtually pure assembly code for the 300mhz TI ARM because memory is reaallly tight (like... 128k). it's doable
l.
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Exophase
Nothing good will ever come of Exophase.
Any word on the S5PC110? That's a pretty good processor. Or you could wait for what'll be in the next gen Beagleboard. That has ethernet, afaik. Adding ethernet over USB is probably pretty cheap (so is adding a USB hub).
I wouldn't expect to be able to get a dual core Cortex-A9 any time soon, much less a totally open one. Maybe if TI starts pushing OMAP4 like they did OMAP35xx.
The PATA bridge seemed to make more sense for SATA to me.. no special drivers and you get PATA support too..
But if you absolutely must use this 300MHz CPU you don't need to code in ASM. C is fine for working within 128KB.
(btw - and bear in mind I don't want another x86 netbook - but your conceptions on x86 are way off mark, Moorestown SoCs come much more integrated and lower power than you think.. I dunno about needing an NDA, but chances are most of the peripherals save the graphics fall under standard Linux implementations because the SoC is pretty much Linux driven, and I doubt Intel is going through a bunch of trouble to try to do closed modules for this)
(btw x2: there is at least one Tegra 2, ie dual core Cortex-A9 plus non-terrible graphics Android netbook on the market, or at least in preview. It hasn't gotten very good reviews..)
I wouldn't expect to be able to get a dual core Cortex-A9 any time soon, much less a totally open one. Maybe if TI starts pushing OMAP4 like they did OMAP35xx.
The PATA bridge seemed to make more sense for SATA to me.. no special drivers and you get PATA support too..
But if you absolutely must use this 300MHz CPU you don't need to code in ASM. C is fine for working within 128KB.
(btw - and bear in mind I don't want another x86 netbook - but your conceptions on x86 are way off mark, Moorestown SoCs come much more integrated and lower power than you think.. I dunno about needing an NDA, but chances are most of the peripherals save the graphics fall under standard Linux implementations because the SoC is pretty much Linux driven, and I doubt Intel is going through a bunch of trouble to try to do closed modules for this)
(btw x2: there is at least one Tegra 2, ie dual core Cortex-A9 plus non-terrible graphics Android netbook on the market, or at least in preview. It hasn't gotten very good reviews..)
That is a problem, yeah.lkcl said:
I'm hoping for OMAP4, but I guess we'll see how that turns out. Certainly it'll be a while before any such thing becomes available.
If I were you I'd maximize the battery space - remember, this is THE selling point for this device - it's not exactly overpowered compared to modern netbooks; the major advantage is the long battery life (and free software, of course).lkcl said:
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Prometheus
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Yeah, the thread's creator - it's most welcome, since he's continuing the discussion. (I'm still following with interest.)
(I'm still following with interest.)
Kangal
Member
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lkcl said:
Hey thanks for your highly detailed reply to my proposition.
I think the point about the Tablet-book I proposed is that it will be unique (there are none here in Australia with high-end netbook specs or a Capatouchscreen).
Well don't worry about the Intel vs ARM battery life debate, I've looked into it and provided some rough figures.
For portability's sake, the Atoms and CULVs can just barely get away with it, but the ARMs can do so without breaking a sweat.
I know the size restrictions, but I've only gotten the insight about the motherboard issues by you. I know the Atom can be done, but the CULVs require some head-scratching to squeeze all components in there.
So yeah, I think my concept is great (once Win7 is Optimized) but the main problem is the "motherboard issue" (squeezig everything inside) and the higher cost in production that negates to higher selling prices (but still iPad competitive prices!).
And I know that is not what your aiming for, so my proposition is pointless, I knew that but just wanted to give you my $0.02
I hope My Concept gets picked up by someone (or the exoPC ups the ante), I would really really like to own and use something like it
Thanks
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Exophase
Nothing good will ever come of Exophase.
Kangal, coming up with mechanical designs is fine, but you can't put together timelines and prices on a concept for which you have no idea what the parts costs, lead times, and design costs will be. You're looking at putting out something at current tablet prices that has a bunch of expenses over current tablets, like a much more complex design, discrete GPU, OLED screen (not LED, that's silly, you should correct that), and so on.
If someone wants to try their hand at a new x86 tablet Moorestown is by far the obvious choice (or wait for Ontario or something), and forget about ever migrating it to a CULV. You only have to get Intel to send out eval boards, samples, and production quantities in something less than tens of thousands, all things they may or may not do. Oh, and you wouldn't get Win 7.
If someone wants to try their hand at a new x86 tablet Moorestown is by far the obvious choice (or wait for Ontario or something), and forget about ever migrating it to a CULV. You only have to get Intel to send out eval boards, samples, and production quantities in something less than tens of thousands, all things they may or may not do. Oh, and you wouldn't get Win 7.
metallurge
Still Fresh
lkcl, part of the challenge is accurately figuring out lead times. For example, if it were going to be 9 months+ before you hit the market, Cortex A9 and USB 3.0 are going to look pretty necessary to me.
I agree, by the way, about quality HIDs (kb, mouse/tp/ball). Look, for example, at the Tandy Model 100. Such a great keyboard and form factor that there are *still* people out there using them. We're talking about a Z80 CPU running at ~1Mhz here... Also, pick up a used Thinkpad 600 series (600X's are nice), and use it a while for inspiration.
[As an aside, IMHO, OpenPandora ultimately lives or dies based on the quality & longevity of its keyboard/keypad/screen.]
8-14" screen. Spend some time finding a great one, like the super-res Thinkpad screens (I think it was in T60ish models). Thinkpad 600 had a 13.3" screen, and it still is an all-around good, well-balanced form factor.
Rugged (i.e. quality materials, mechanical simplicity, and good design).
I personally would like one that has multitouch, can flip the screen completely around into a tablet form factor, and which runs WebOS a la the Palm Pre, but I don't think that's gonna happen.
I think several "internal" USB bays for things like GSM modules, flash drives, etc, would be a great idea.
Definitely needs great battery life. No reason at all it shouldn't be comparable to OpenPandora.
Have you considered buying OpenPandora motherboards and/or beagleboards & designing a larger netbookish case around them?
Well, those are my thoughts for now.
I agree, by the way, about quality HIDs (kb, mouse/tp/ball). Look, for example, at the Tandy Model 100. Such a great keyboard and form factor that there are *still* people out there using them. We're talking about a Z80 CPU running at ~1Mhz here... Also, pick up a used Thinkpad 600 series (600X's are nice), and use it a while for inspiration.
[As an aside, IMHO, OpenPandora ultimately lives or dies based on the quality & longevity of its keyboard/keypad/screen.]
8-14" screen. Spend some time finding a great one, like the super-res Thinkpad screens (I think it was in T60ish models). Thinkpad 600 had a 13.3" screen, and it still is an all-around good, well-balanced form factor.
Rugged (i.e. quality materials, mechanical simplicity, and good design).
I personally would like one that has multitouch, can flip the screen completely around into a tablet form factor, and which runs WebOS a la the Palm Pre, but I don't think that's gonna happen.
I think several "internal" USB bays for things like GSM modules, flash drives, etc, would be a great idea.
Definitely needs great battery life. No reason at all it shouldn't be comparable to OpenPandora.
Have you considered buying OpenPandora motherboards and/or beagleboards & designing a larger netbookish case around them?
Well, those are my thoughts for now.
Exophase
Nothing good will ever come of Exophase.
This recently announced chip changes everything:
http://www.arm.com/a...ptop-market.php
Here's a product brief:
http://um00i1.chinaw...t%202816_EN.pdf
It's the only announced SoC employing Cortex-A9 with the higher performance/lower power efficiency process (ie, dual core at 2GHz) that's suitable for netbooks/tablets. It also supports 64-bit DDR3 at high bus speeds, SATA, ethernet, HDMI output...
Bottom line, this is THE ARM SoC for netbooks/laptops and anything else is going to be at a serious disadvantage. This is assuming you can buy them any time soon (ARM says they're "available"). On the other hand, chances are very good that Chinese companies are going to beat you to the punch at selling a netbook with this, and you won't be able to be cost competitive with it. So a wait and see approach is probably best, despite having done that all this time thus far already.
I really want one of these now >_>
EDIT: Nufront is showing devices with this chip at CES 2011 in early January, hoping for a laptop, netbook, or tablet. Something not running Android, please.
http://www.arm.com/a...ptop-market.php
Here's a product brief:
http://um00i1.chinaw...t%202816_EN.pdf
It's the only announced SoC employing Cortex-A9 with the higher performance/lower power efficiency process (ie, dual core at 2GHz) that's suitable for netbooks/tablets. It also supports 64-bit DDR3 at high bus speeds, SATA, ethernet, HDMI output...
Bottom line, this is THE ARM SoC for netbooks/laptops and anything else is going to be at a serious disadvantage. This is assuming you can buy them any time soon (ARM says they're "available"). On the other hand, chances are very good that Chinese companies are going to beat you to the punch at selling a netbook with this, and you won't be able to be cost competitive with it. So a wait and see approach is probably best, despite having done that all this time thus far already.
I really want one of these now >_>
EDIT: Nufront is showing devices with this chip at CES 2011 in early January, hoping for a laptop, netbook, or tablet. Something not running Android, please.
Kangal
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Exophase said:
Wow, thanks that's important news. Just when everyone was waiting for the Tegra 2, this is announced. What is somewhat important is the GPU they bundle it with. I'm hoping for a PowerVr (they're the market leaders, just like Intel when it comes to netbook cpus) and hoping its their highest available SGX540 or one of the one's that they haven't started manufacturing in bulk like the SGX543MP8 (or even SGX543MP16!!).
Seriously, if the Chinese pull this off (and they're quite reliable at doing so), future devices will make even the Samsung Galaxy seem obsolete, and also the Intel Z6xx is going to have a VERY HARD TIME.
I agree, Adroid just wont be utilizing all that power, it'll be the bottleneck. Too bad, Windows 7 would've run like a dream, but that's obviously never* going to happen. So the only candidates we have are Ubuntu, Other Linux OS (RedHat etc), Custom Linux's (not unlike Bada) or MeeGo.
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Asmo
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- 2,279
Seen this?
http://www.umpcportal.com/2010/09/ocosmos-ocs1-oaktrail-umpc-hands-on/
Price is conspicuously absent.
http://www.umpcportal.com/2010/09/ocosmos-ocs1-oaktrail-umpc-hands-on/
Price is conspicuously absent.
CPUnltd
Active Member
here's something for you to look at (fairly on-topic, IMHO...)
http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Always-Innovating-Smart-Book/
http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Always-Innovating-Smart-Book/
