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OLPC Set To Dump x86 For Arm Chips In XO 2
angry tapir writes with this excerpt from Good Gear Guide: "One Laptop Per Child is set to dump x86 processors, instead opting to put low-power Arm-based processors in its next-generation XO-2 laptop with the aim of improving battery life. The nonprofit is 'almost' committed to putting the Arm-based chip in the next-generation XO-2 laptop, which is due for release in 18 months, according to Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of OLPC. The XO-1 laptop currently ships with Advanced Micro Devices' aging Geode chip, which is based on an x86 design."
It would mean no Windows. ARM is not an x86 architecture.
You know there is something called debian which runs on all sorts of architectures. And this debian resembles ubuntu somewhat :P Relevant link: http://www.debian.org/ports
The fact that AMD is not planning a successor to the Geode processor used in the XO-1 probably influenced this decision, at least in part. In 18 months, there may not be any Geodes remaining.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
No in German "Arm" means arm (body part) and "arm" means poor.
Windows CE runs on ARM. Granted, CE doesn't have the level of application support you'll find in other versions of Windows though.
G. Washington on Government "it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
WinCE (What were they thinking when they picked that name???) does not run standard windows apps. Since this is the reason many stick with windows, it kind of kills that whole aspect. WinCE is the core behind Windows Mobile and some embedded systems, and would not likely work well in a full laptop.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
"Even Windows 7 potentially has some DOS 1.0 code..."
What? You realize that Windows 7 lineage traces to Windows NT which ran on non-x86 processors, right? No DOS code.
I guess if by "potentially" you meant zero potential then that's right.
They jettisoned Sugar, and they keep courting Microsoft. So sad. I wish the article would have explored the "open source" hardware concept. No idea what the heck that means from the article or for OLPC:
Not true. Sugar is still being used. Windows XP still does not boot correctly on the XO. Open source hardware is a concept that has been around a while. I know that concept is hard for Wintel folk to understand,
What does such a move mean for backward compatibility? Aren't their applications already written with the existing OLPC in mind? I am afraid, it will not be as easy as "just recompile" to port some of them and those, who have already paid for theirs may have to pay again to be able to use them on the new hardware...
How did this get a score of 2? This just shows lack of knowledge of the OLPC project. The OS/GUI is open source. Sugar is free to download as are the Activities which are written in python.
I suppose it depends on whether any of the vm86 mode in Windows 9x made it into Win2k and beyond.
If any of the 16-bit ASM code behind the various int 21h DOS calls was retained in the real-mode emulation layer then one could say modern Windows still has DOS code still in it.
But what if it's at the start of a sentence, pedant? "Arm kann ich sein, aber klueger als Sie"
Always back up, never back down. ---- Think you're cool 'cos your uid is prime? Take mine, modulo the one digit integers
That's Server 2003, which is the most recent version I've got handy. The assertion that there's some legacy code in Windows 7 somewhere is a reasonable one.
The level of support?
It flat out won't run x86 code.
Whereas debian and other linuxes have full distros aimed at ARM.
In Germany, where we usually write things together, if they describe one thing, we call that error a "Deppenleerzeichen" ("moron's blank"?).
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
The latest ARM SoCs from Freescale cost $23 in bulk, including 1GHz CPU, GPU, and a DSP that can decode H.264 at 720p. They run Linux and will soon run other free operating systems. In terms of power per Watt and power per dollar, they beat anything Intel has to offer, by an order of magnitude in some cases. There's a reason most of the netbook manufacturers have ARM releases planned for the next few months.
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