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well... y'know what? even brownian motion gets it right if there's enough molecules. the trick is in being able to spot the one molecule that pops out at the right place at the right time, and this is no different, really.

out of hundreds of articles on climate theory predictions, at least _one_ of them had to get it right. the problem is this, however: that correctness could only be spotted in retrospect, and so doesn't actually help us *unless* the article goes on to predict a bit further into the future, and even then it *still* doesn't really help us to solve the problem (which is that action needs to be taken) because, once again, people really won't listen until it's yet *again* too late.

all of which goes to just highlight that the problem is not the predictions, but that nothing's been done *about* those predictions. so that just leaves it to us to DO something, as individuals. which is why i'm actually doing something, in two areas that i am interested in: cars - http://lkcl.net/ev - and computers - http://rhombus-tech.net./ what are _you_ doing, slashdot reader?

The Raspberry Pi is already obsolete. Rhombus-Tech is coming out with a board based on the Allwinner ARM implementation, 3x as fast as the obsolete CPU the Pi crowd is using. "Mass-volume pricing (just for the CPU card, and therefore excluding tax, shipping, profit, a case and a power supply) looks to be on target for around $15:" They're also looking at reusing the BeagleBoard form factor (which is much like an Arduno) and coming out with a fast Linux board in that format.

By the time the Raspberry Pi crowd delivers, they'll be obsolete. Much like the OLPC.

and when will this ship? 3 or 4 years after? =))

The Raspberry Pi is already obsolete. Rhombus-Tech is coming out with a board based on the Allwinner ARM implementation, 3x as fast as the obsolete CPU the Pi crowd is using. "Mass-volume pricing (just for the CPU card, and therefore excluding tax, shipping, profit, a case and a power supply) looks to be on target for around $15:" They're also looking at reusing the BeagleBoard form factor (which is much like an Arduno) and coming out with a fast Linux board in that format.

By the time the Raspberry Pi crowd delivers, they'll be obsolete. Much like the OLPC.

This will not happen.

I love statements like that. So certain of the future... But, there are a few projects now looking at fully open source ARM based systems. (for example, http://rhombus-tech.net/ ) This means all specs out there, and drivers. As they come out and get popular, the cost will fall, and more closed companies will use them as they are cheaper. As this continues, they will end up with a competitive advantage over the closed hardware, which will open, or perish. I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

"Over time it's only grown to be even more challenging as over the years the companies involved have gotten more and more 'secret'. In the beginning you could actually read markers on chips in the devices and then search for the chips online and find data sheets for them that told us how to program them."

i've done reverse-engineering, and yes it is exciting, but it doesn't really get results: it's damn hard work, and for what? you're always behind the times - never innovating, always riding on the coat-tails of companies who, as linus notes on page 2 of the interview, end up making hardware design mistakes, and you invested _how_ much time in order to find that out?

so we set up http://rhombus-tech.net/ as an initiative to create open hardware that is actually desirable as mass-volume products, with free software developers being actively engaged and consulted on the hardware _and_ software development at every step of the way.

there are several such initiatives that could really do with working together - the most recent one is the plasma "spark" tablet - except that there, unfortunately, they appear to have picked a tablet from a company that is known to be willfully committing GPL violations (zenithink). not too many people spotted that one, in amongst the otherwise-exciting news reports, whoops.

maybe MIPS in the form of the Chinese-derivative Loongson?

That's already happening, and they're selling like hotcakes. http://www.mobilemag.com/2012/01/12/79-ainol-novo-7-paladin-tablet-does-ice-cream-sandwich/

The problem for Intel is the price of these SoCs:

• $5 TI ARM Cortex A8, 500mhz,
• $7 Ingenic jz4770 1ghz MIPS with a Vivante GC600 3D GPU
• $7 Allwinner A10, 1.5ghz ARM Cortex A8 with a MALI400 GPU
• $75 Intel Atom Z670 Oak Trail 1.50GHz GMA 600 GPU

http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/

They may not be as capable as the Atom, but they're good enough to make very usable tablets at 1/10th the price.

My goodness! The preorder page is on the wiki:

http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/orders/

Do you work for Broadcommm?

These boards are only a few weeks away, far more powerful, low priced and have nothing to do with broadcommm

http://rhombus-tech.net/

http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/PCMCIA

From http://rhombus-tech.net/

"The second idea under consideration is to adapt the beaglebone, which has full CAD/CAM schematics, publicly available under Open Hardware Licenses. The reason for considering this CPU is that in mass-volume it is as low as $USD 5. Placing this into an EOMA-PCMCIA-compliant format would provide a low-cost second option, and use of the AM3357 instead of the AM3358 would allow products that used the AM3357 to be FSF Hardware-endorsed."

good man! feel free to fill in the preorder form http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/orders/ i'm a bit reluctant to do it on your behalf [aitch tee tee pee slashdot dot org slash tilde hatta]

please do bear in mind that in the early stage we're *not* going to sell completely untested cards in mass-volume right away, that would be foolish. we're going to follow the process that Dr Schaller has been doing on the development of the GTA04 - http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/GTA04_revisions as have various other projects, OpenPandora included.

so, early alpha boards go out to people prepared to take a risk, but who have the money spare (under $100, gosh, wow, break the bank why not) to consider "what the heck, this is cool, let's support this initiative" but at the same time have some expertise in embedded GNU/Linux development, and they might actually get something that works perfectly first time, and they're the ones that got it, before anyone else.

beta boards go out to people who want something that, hardware-wise, is pretty much guaranteed to work 100%, but maybe the software's not all there, and they might have to (gosh) get involved and help write it.

stable boards go out to people who really would "just like something that works, thank you, where's the debian distro image, where's the instructions for putting everything onto an sdcard, heck, where can i buy a pre-loaded MicroSD card so i don't have to do that, even".

so it's a known trade-off: the principles of Software (Libre) Development as applied to hardware: release early, release often. exactly the sort of thing that you never normally see in the development of hardware products, and i think it's pretty damn cool to be able to witness and be part of something that *isn't* GPL-violating. at bloody last.

yaa, who said anything about competing? :) feel free to buy a 700mhz ARM11 unit for $25 when it's available. we're going in incremental stages. if you've seen what happened to projects like the OpenPandora, the OpenMoko and so on, you'll appreciate why. http://rhombus-tech.net//faq/#index2h2

http://rhombus-tech.net//faq/#index4h2 - re-use of *existing* connectors, housings and assemblies keeps the price right down. yes you're absolutely right: expecting a complete new design of connector to be reasonably affordable is impossible.

the whole initiative is based around leap-frogging over the normal barriers to entry for products. use Software (Libre) Developers for the software engineering. use off-the-shelf parts as much as possible. do a deal with the factory ["we won't charge you for software engineer time if you won't charge us for hardware engineer time"]. use pre-existing casework designs from China-based Industrial Flea Markets (don't get the wrong idea, here - these Markets are the size of football pitches and 7 stories high!) and so on.

I appreciate the fullness of the answer.

no problem.

What will it cost to do something with the dev module? At least through the network?

ok, one idea i'm advocating is to adapt arduino-like schematics to connect directly to the EOMA-PCMCIA-compliant interface. as such projects are usually a 2-layer board, very low-cost and the schematics are available under Open Source Licenses, it's a no-brainer. probably the best one to pick is the Leaflab's Maple: http://leaflabs.com/devices/maple/ because in mass-volume the CPU is around $1 to $1.50 (the 48-pin version not the 100-pin version!)

as this CPU is so low-cost, but importantly also so highly functional, its use substitutes and strategically "normalises" Motherboard designs. the plans being discussed at the moment include using the STM32F to do Audio (because of the D/A and A/D converters), battery monitoring (A/D converters), LCD Backlight control (PWM), resistive touchpanels (A/D converters again), keyboard matrix (8+8 GPIO) - someone's already written a mouse driver so at least that doesn't need to be done :)

so yes: if you're interested, look up the cost of arduino-like devices. at least for prototyping purposes you could just get an off-the-shelf leafpad maple and connect it directly to the EOMA-PCMCIA-compliant CPU card even with a few bits of wire, in a pinch.

anway, here's a link to some example motherboards that have been designed: http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/PCMCIA#Example_Motherboards
that includes a "micro" engineering board (that's nothing more complex than an adaptation of existing leafpad maple schematics) as well as something that's similar to the IMX53QSB, Beagleboard, Pandaboard and Origen etc.

Your price targets sound delightful. Might as well mark it up another $20 so you can fund the next version too. Or if the money could be spent on making it more rugged, that would be well-spent.

If the CPU is as fast as you say then there might be more interest in the dev module than you'd think.

yes, that's the plan :) would love to have some brainstorming ideas written by people on the possibilities, hmmm... let me just create a wiki page: http://rhombus-tech.net//community_ideas

Here's the thread on debian-arm: http://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/2011/12/msg00008.html and the corresponding one on arm-netbook: http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/pipermail/arm-netbook/2011-December/thread.html

The problem that's been made clear time and time again is that if you want low-cost mass-produced hardware, you normally have to go with GPL-violating products (see list here http://www.codon.org.uk/~mjg59/android_tablets/) and that means that you will spend the majority of your time reverse-engineering the product for anything between two weeks and two years, depending on luck and skill, before getting something useful. By the time you're done, the product is usually end-of-lifed: thus if it breaks, you're back to square one.

The reason for the GPL violations is that the low-cost China-based Factories simply have zero software skills: they're provided with binary-only firmware from an ODM who themselves usually had to sign an NDA from the SoC manufacturer, itself in direct violation of the GPL, in order to get access to the source code. Normally there's a chain of at least *five* companies with whom you have to negotiate with for several days or weeks - each - in order to explain the situation to them, against a precarious balance of them basically not giving a stuff because there's no financial incentive for them to give you anything at all: they're already making money, selling product, so why should they care?

thus, we logically concluded that the only way to get non-GPL-violating product out there is to go directly to the factories and be the supplier of their software.

so for the past two years i've been contacting and vetting China-based factories, directly, to find at least one which is prepared to work with us (RH Technology - http://www.rh-technology.com./ the basis of the deal is, "we won't charge you for software expertise if you won't charge us for hardware design costs", and after two years we finally found _one_ factory willing to do a deal, and are looking for more.

we've also found an absolutely great CPU, called the Allwinner A10, which in mass-volume quantities is only about $7: that means that a PCB similar to the raspberrypi with similar features can be made for about $15 (not $25) and, because the Allwinner CPU is an ARM Cortex A8 not an ARM11 it is at least three times quicker than the raspberrypi's CPU.

now we have at least 15 Debian Developers who are willing to support the project by buying beta hardware samples, and we're looking for more people to help support this effort, by committing to buy product (just like with the OpenPandora http://openpandora.org./ we have set up a CIC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_interest_company) because it's a better vehicle than a non-profit, charity or profit-maximising company. the CIC is called Rhombus Tech - http://rhombus-tech.net./

we also have the full support of the Board of Directors of the Allwinner CPU: they released full source code to us in advance. we've made it available and found it to compile successfully.

in-advance GPL-compliant hardware really is very very unusual. even USA-based companies typically release GPL source code on or after the day that a product is announced. Archos for example made a tablet that used the Telechips TCC8900 series of CPUs, and complied with the GPL (in direct violation of the standard NDA available at the time from the SoC manufacturer!).

other than that: about the only existing product on the market that i can really recommend to you is the alwaysinnovating touchbook: http://alwaysinnovating.com/ - it's about $300.