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MojoKid writes "For over 10 years, the desktop and mobile graphics space has been dominated by two players: Nvidia and AMD/ATI. After 3dfx collapsed, there was a brief period of time when it looked as though Imagination Technologies might establish itself as a third option. Ultimately, that didn't happen — the company's tile-based rendering solution, Kyro, failed to gain mass-market support and faded after two generations. Now, there's a flurry of evidence to suggest that Imagination Technologies plans to re-enter PC market, but from the opposite direction. Rather than building expensive discrete solutions, IT is focused on deploying GPUs that can challenge Nvidia and AMD solutions in tablets, mobile phones, and possibly netbooks. Over the past two weeks, Imagination Technologies has announced new, higher-end versions of its Power VR Series 6 GPU, claiming that the new Power VR G6230 and G6430 go '"all out," adding incremental extra area for maximum performance whilst minimising power consumption.' There's a new ray-tracing SDK out and a post discussing how PowerVR is utilizing GPU Compute and OpenCL to offload and accelerate CPU-centric tasks." Update: 06/17 17:53 GMT by T : Related: An anonymous reader adds a link to a new project from the FSF to reverse engineer the PowerVR SGX.

An anonymous reader notes the announcement by Sean Moss-Pultz (Openmoko, Inc.) of a new geek device: The $99 WikiReader. All of Wikipedia in your pocket with no Internet connection required. Works in bright sunlight. 3-button interface. You can update the information in the WikiReader either by mail (they ship a microSD card) or by downloading a 4+ GB file.

ptorrone writes "MAKE Magazine has put together their 3rd annual 'State of Open Source Hardware 2008' — in just a few years, the number of projects has grown from a small handful to an amazing 60+ offerings. Similar to open source software, open source hardware is available with source code, schematics, firmware and bills of materials, and allows commercial use. The most popular project, Arduino, the open source prototyping platform for artists and engineers, has shipped over 60,000 units." The article is formatted such that the first link for a particular device will usually take you to the project home page. Some will bring you instead to where you can purchase the items, but most still have a "How To" tab which will direct you to guides and instructions on how to build your own gadgets. There are a bunch of interesting devices, from the Game of Life on the outside of a cube to a home-made MP3 player to OpenMoko.

mario writes "Now that the OpenMoko platform has stabilized enough to provide the OM2008 image (supporting the three major toolkits), things are starting to heat up. Linuxdevices is reporting on the start of a port of Devicescape's connect application. Koolu (another Canadian company) is also doing development for its W.E. phone (a branded FreeRunner). Which leads me to ask: Where are the American companies?"

mario writes "Now that the OpenMoko platform has stabilized enough to provide the OM2008 image (supporting the three major toolkits), things are starting to heat up. Linuxdevices is reporting on the start of a port of Devicescape's connect application. Koolu (another Canadian company) is also doing development for its W.E. phone (a branded FreeRunner). Which leads me to ask: Where are the American companies?"

BrianWCarver writes "It was inevitable. One can now run the entire Debian distribution (ARM port) on the Openmoko Neo Freerunner. We previously discussed the July 4th launch of this GNU/Linux-based smartphone, which is open down to its core, with the company providing CAD files and schematics for the phone. Openmoko released an update to their software stack earlier this month, called Om2008.8, which is still a work in progress. But now one can use these instructions on the Debian wiki to open up the possibility of using apt-get to access Debian's more than 20,000 applications on your phone, which, due to integration with freesmartphone.org efforts, can also actually be used as a phone. There were previous efforts to run Debian on the predecessor product to the Neo FreeRunner, the Neo 1973, but with the wider adoption of the Neo FreeRunner and the hard work of many Debian developers at the ongoing DebConf 8, carrying Debian in your pocket has just gotten a lot easier."

BrianWCarver writes "It was inevitable. One can now run the entire Debian distribution (ARM port) on the Openmoko Neo Freerunner. We previously discussed the July 4th launch of this GNU/Linux-based smartphone, which is open down to its core, with the company providing CAD files and schematics for the phone. Openmoko released an update to their software stack earlier this month, called Om2008.8, which is still a work in progress. But now one can use these instructions on the Debian wiki to open up the possibility of using apt-get to access Debian's more than 20,000 applications on your phone, which, due to integration with freesmartphone.org efforts, can also actually be used as a phone. There were previous efforts to run Debian on the predecessor product to the Neo FreeRunner, the Neo 1973, but with the wider adoption of the Neo FreeRunner and the hard work of many Debian developers at the ongoing DebConf 8, carrying Debian in your pocket has just gotten a lot easier."

holdenkarau writes "The North American OpenMoko FreeRunners are starting to arrive. It would appear that the OpenMoko still has problems with some 3G networks, including AT&T. Although, in my own personal completely unscientific test, 2 out of 3 AT&T SIM cards worked. Check out the unboxing of a complete FreeRunner (along with debug board) and my experience getting the FreeRunner up and running. Or a direct link to the pictures for those of you bored with text. If you feel brave enough to take the plunge, you can buy your own FreeRunner from the OpenMoko store."

holdenkarau writes "The North American OpenMoko FreeRunners are starting to arrive. It would appear that the OpenMoko still has problems with some 3G networks, including AT&T. Although, in my own personal completely unscientific test, 2 out of 3 AT&T SIM cards worked. Check out the unboxing of a complete FreeRunner (along with debug board) and my experience getting the FreeRunner up and running. Or a direct link to the pictures for those of you bored with text. If you feel brave enough to take the plunge, you can buy your own FreeRunner from the OpenMoko store."

An anonymous reader writes "Sean Moss-Pultz has just announced on the OpenMoko mailing list that the Neo1973 is finally available for purchase. OpenMoko.com is now taking orders via credit card. OpenMoko intends to 'free your phone' through a hardware-independent and open source user interface backed by the Linux kernel. This device could very well stand as a competitor to the more expensive Apple iPhone, but at a fraction of the price and with no vendor lock-in. Although the devices in this release cycle (GTA01) are mainly intended for developers, the up-and-coming devices targeted to the consumer market (GTA02) will also feature WiFi capabilities, a 3D acceleration unit, and 256MB of on-board flash. Both units will use the MicroSD card interface for removable storage and have USB client / host capabilities. For a full feature list, check out OpenMoko.com or the OpenMoko Wiki."

An anonymous reader writes "Sean Moss-Pultz has just announced on the OpenMoko mailing list that the Neo1973 is finally available for purchase. OpenMoko.com is now taking orders via credit card. OpenMoko intends to 'free your phone' through a hardware-independent and open source user interface backed by the Linux kernel. This device could very well stand as a competitor to the more expensive Apple iPhone, but at a fraction of the price and with no vendor lock-in. Although the devices in this release cycle (GTA01) are mainly intended for developers, the up-and-coming devices targeted to the consumer market (GTA02) will also feature WiFi capabilities, a 3D acceleration unit, and 256MB of on-board flash. Both units will use the MicroSD card interface for removable storage and have USB client / host capabilities. For a full feature list, check out OpenMoko.com or the OpenMoko Wiki."

An anonymous reader writes "Sean Moss-Pultz has just announced on the OpenMoko mailing list that the Neo1973 is finally available for purchase. OpenMoko.com is now taking orders via credit card. OpenMoko intends to 'free your phone' through a hardware-independent and open source user interface backed by the Linux kernel. This device could very well stand as a competitor to the more expensive Apple iPhone, but at a fraction of the price and with no vendor lock-in. Although the devices in this release cycle (GTA01) are mainly intended for developers, the up-and-coming devices targeted to the consumer market (GTA02) will also feature WiFi capabilities, a 3D acceleration unit, and 256MB of on-board flash. Both units will use the MicroSD card interface for removable storage and have USB client / host capabilities. For a full feature list, check out OpenMoko.com or the OpenMoko Wiki."

Placid writes "The BBC has up an article detailing the 'Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded' project which was announced by Matt Zimmerman, Ubuntu's CTO, on the Ubuntu developers mailing list. Zimmerman stated that 'These devices place new demands on open-source software and require innovative graphical interfaces, improved power management and better responsiveness.' According to the article, Intel will have their finger in the pie too, as they've recently announced a prototype device running Ubuntu. Part of the project's goal is to maximise the power saving abilities of a planned low-energy chip codenamed Silverthorn. The chip will be just one-seventh the size of normal chips, and consume only 10% of the power of existing processor. What does this mean for projects such as OpenMoko? Healthy competition, or the beginning of the end?"

levell writes "The schedule for the OpenMoko, an open source, Linux-based Neo1973 smart phone was posted to the community mailing list by Sean Moss-Pultz this morning. On Feb 11, free phones will be sent to key community developers and the community websites/wiki/bug tracker will be available. Then on March 11 (the official developer launch) we'll be able to buy an OpenMoko for $350. After allowing some time for innovative, slick software to be created there will be a mass market launch at which point Sean hopes that 'your mom and dad will want one too.'"