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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."
OLPC Set To Dump x86 For Arm Chips In XO 2
I'm sorry, I thought ARM is an acronym for Advanced RISC Machine (formerly Acorn RISC Machine). Why am I seeing it used as "Arm"?
Or is there something I don't know about the processing power of two of my appendages?
My work here is dung.
A keyboard. How quaint. (cracks knuckles)
I am officially gone from
It was angry, but it seems to have calmed down now.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
From TFA
"Like many, we are urging Microsoft to make Windows -- not Windows Mobile -- available on the Arm. This is a complex question for them," Negroponte said.
OLPC is in talks with Microsoft to develop a version of a full Windows OS for XO-2, Negroponte said. The XO-2 is still 18 months away from release, so "a lot can change with regard to Microsoft and Arm," Negroponte said.
I don't really see this working. Windows has run on Risc before of course, but almost no one ported their applications to any of the Risc platforms. And a top of the line Arm (a Snapdragon or Cortex A8) is still less powerful than a bottom of the line x86 (Intel Atom), so it's not like you can run x86 binaries at an acceptable speed through emulation, like Dec tried with FX!32 on the Alpha.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
The OLPC project is dying. Four years ago, you didn't have the netbooks. Now you do.
Shifting to ARM will simply ensure the death of the OLPC project, because being able to run real windows is an underappreciated benefit of x86.
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It would mean no Windows. ARM is not an x86 architecture.
I seem to recall seeing something awhile ago that Ubuntu is being ported to the ARM architecture. If the port is ready, using it would be a much better proposition than begging Microsoft to make a custom Windows OS for the XO-2, IMO. What would stop Microsoft from deliberately crippling the OS (and making it practically useless as a result) like they did with the starter editions of XP and Vista? Those were meant for the same type of market demographic as OLPC, after all.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
I remember clearly that /. reported that Steve Jobs had originally agreed to license OS X to the OLPC project for free (as in beer), but that the offer was refused.
Since it is a well-known fact that Apple has had OS X working on an ARM architecture in the iPhone and iPod Touch for nearly 2 years now, it would seem a no-brainer at this point for OLPC to take Apple up on their offer.
Well, actually the netbook makers such as Asus are trying to move towards ARM-based machines with Linux so that they can reach much lower price points. ;-)
In some way it makes more sense than the x86 Linux offering they had: why pay for x86 compatibility if the users aren't going to be able to install Word or the windows drivers for the printer they just bought? You might as well go fully incompatible and buy cheaper chips that use less power etc.
As nobody had predicted the success of netbooks and the reasons of that success are not completely clear, it makes sense to try the ARM approach just in case it's going to be very successful.
I believe that some people run AmigaOS on their netbook by the way
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:
I doubt that the OLPC project is feeling warm and fuzzy about intel; but I don't think that that is the reason for ARM vs. Atom.
Thing is, to fulfill its objectives, the XO-2 has to be cheap, really cheap, to make. Atom based netbooks, even for the lowest spec models, in a highly competitive free market optimization process, have essentially failed to crack the $200 mark. Most are $300-$400. The OLPC guys really want less than $100. At this point, a $200 Atom netbook has already been cut to the bone, very little left(you might be able to cut out the ethernet jack and VGA; but you'd need to add the wireless mesh chip, and the more rugged case, it'd be a wash). Expecting that branch of development to halve in cost in the near future is pretty implausible.
That, rather than bitterness, is most likely the real reason. ARM is available, from a variety of vendors, at price/performance points that scale relatively smoothly from highish-end microcontrollers to modestly powerful laptop chips. x86 isn't(not yet, anyway).
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
So you'd get all of the disadvantages of Windows, while simultaneously loosing the only real advantage it has, plentiful software. Smart.
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"
I'm a developer who ports Windows CE to devices. All day, every day. Teach classes on it even. Been doing it since CE 3.0. Currently on 6.0.
CE makes a passable embedded/PDA device, but there is no way in the world you'd want it on a laptop.
It just isn't made for that kind of a setup. No native compilers, no swap file. Expensive license restrictions. It's less like a computer and more like a gadget in terms of overall feel.
Use Linux instead.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The level of support?
It flat out won't run x86 code.
Whereas debian and other linuxes have full distros aimed at ARM.
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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Even a 400MHz Pentium2 will run circles around those 1GHz ARM CPUs.
Nowhere near true. Clock for clock, the Cortex A8 has similar performance to the Pentium-M.
That's the point, really, isn't it? ARM chips need special hardware DSPs for just about ANYTHING you want to do.
No, but it's more power efficient. A 1.5GHz Pentium M can't decode 720p H.264 without dropping frames, while the DSP on a typical A8-based SoC can handle it easily in around 200mW. Doing the same thing on something like an Atom CPU would take around 2-4W. You're talking at least an order of magnitude power difference for doing the same task, which in a mobile device is very important.
Yes, because most people don't do anything computationally intensive with their netbooks
Exactly, and for the things that are computationally-intensive it makes more sense to have dedicated silicon that can handle it in a fraction of the power consumption. That's why most of the shipping ARM SoCs have a DSP and a GPU on die.
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