Look sparkles!!! Believe what you want. Just keep in mind the "diversity" of tests they run, like "Content Creation" and "Multimedia" and...
It's been QUITE a while since the last benchmark included things like thread creation, compile times, crypto operations, etc.... I wonder why that is... Also keep in mind the scale. Often you'll see huge differences in the bars and it could amounts to a 1% difference in performance (which any stats class would tell you could be lost in the noise).
I'm not saying all benchmarks are shite, just that most aren't very thorough or scientific. They just run [or claim to] a suite of boxed tests and post the results. They don't actually crack out the standard deviation and other stats to tell you what the results actually mean.
And if you're "best box" is an X2 4800+ then shut your gob, that's a decent processor. What are you doing where you're really hurting for more performance anyways?
Now who is the fanboi... I wouldn't call the AMD chips mediocre. Even if they were [say] 5% slower than Intel, that's still ridiculously fast given that most people rarely stress their processors. I doubt that my parents box ever ramps up from the low 1GHz power setting for instance...
AMD processors are cheaper, and the integrated memory controller makes motherboards cheaper (my experience has been by ~10-20$).
Not to mention that the Opterons smoke Intel in HPC applications. FSB == bad.
I think you really over estimate how simple computers are. Remember, that the mouse was laughed out of the Xerox HQ when it was first proposed. You're talking about a culture who have NEVER USED a computer. Not that, they have them at the school but not at home, but that they've never touched one.
You lack objectivity because you most likely grew up in a nation which has computers (or if you're older than that simply don't remember the 60s and 70s).
As for CE, my point stands. They may use the retail sales to subsidize the educational sales. I seriously question the use in a school setting for using CE.
I own all of those boxes. [well the E6300 is an E6600 now].
The Core 2 Duo *is* a nice chip, but in terms of raw ALU performance it's no better than an Opteron (hint: it's a similar 3-pipe ALU). The FPU is a bit faster because it's natively 128-bit, but that's about it. The extra cache mostly makes up for the lack of a memory controller.
Where the C2D *does* shine is power consumption. Compared to the 90nm parts from AMD the C2D parts are much cooler, take less power, and are way easier to overclock.
Most benchmarks today are fabrications designed to peddle people over to highly advertised ladden web pages. I seriously doubt if more than half of all published benchmarks ever took place.
It's amazing that you think most benchmarks aren't skewed by corporate greed or rampant fanboy loyalty.
Also vector optimizations are not well suited to most crypto tasks. Raw ALU power is which is why there is a huge diff from the Pentium 4 to any of the other chips.
If you're really that naive, get yourself an AM2 and C2D setup and time shit yourself.
The Core 2 Duo has caught up, and in certain applications beat the AMD64 design, but in terms of IPC it's not really better. Where the C2D shines is power efficiency. My E6600 (2.4GHz) is running happily at 3.42GHz without overvolting or other fooling around. At this speeds I can compile, and run any crypto test I throw at it through my daily chores faster than any AMDX2 on the market. For a hell of a lot less than what the AMDFX series cost.
I imagine the AMD 65nm part is suitable for overclocking and in 2007 we'll see 3+GHz high IPC parts be standard in retail.
Thank god for a more sensible drinking age (of 19). Frankly, I'd just favour stronger moving violation penalties. Get caught speeding, suspended license for a month. Get caught drunk driving, license suspended for life, etc... None of this "oh well, he was doing 90 in a 55 but it was exam week so we'll just give you a fine and let you on your way" bullshit...
Driving != right, so get over it.
Also other offenses
Cutting people off, death. High-beams on in the city, DIAF death. Running a red, entrance in the marines.
afaik it's only illegal to SERVE alcohol to minors (with few exceptions). I'm sure it's totally illegal to become drunk as a minor. Just how you accomplish that is a mystery...
copyright infringement is copyright infringement, not stealing. Just like murder isn't stealing, neither is fraud, or tax evasion. I'm sure libel isn't stealing, presenting false documentation, contempt of court, etc....
It's really hard to get all morally upright over copyright infringement when you know the crack dealing executives aren't actually sharing the profits with the artists who are the ones putting their talent and originality on the line in the first place.
I'm sure you 2 year old has seen you use your computer which is why they can randomly point and click on things. These are going to a nation where even the parents have never seen a computer first hand.
As to the commit level, it doesn't matter. Any additional cost is unwanted and detrimental. Especially when there is no added value over what currently exists.
And to the comment about C/Python the problem is that Windows doesn't present a proper UNIX/POSIX layer. So many applications require things like Cygwin to work in Windows. As for the graphics, it's a frame buffer, and all of their applications are built on X11. As for sound, it's most likely ALSA based drivers.
According to the CIA factbook there are 32.7 million children below the age of 14 in Mexico (one of the pilot countries). This $3 per laptop means an additional $96 million dollars to procure what some already consider an extravagent "toy." it would be totally against the best interests of this project to add this cost. And making up for it would mean making it a $97 dollar laptop. Given that the current cost per laptop is ~$147 this is not a good thing.
But even if MSFT licenses it for free (e.g. BSD style or something) who is going to write the applications? The window manager? etc. Currently all of the OLPC software is a mixture of C and Python running in a GNU/Linux environment. It would be very non-trivial to port it to Windows and make the deadline of shipping these next year.
I don't speak for the OLPC staff or project, but I seriously doubt they have any interest in switching the OS to Windows, especially this far in the game. Most likely, it's to follow some other market segment, like selling them to the first world retail market.
It would be better if he didn't fund it with strings attached. Charity is supposed to be a SACRIFICE not a business plan.
A dude with that much money should really get better perspective. He's crazy wealthy. Congrats. But yet people still don't respect him, unless that is, they're on the receiving end of a large cheque. Personally, I think if I was instantly crazy wealthy I could sort out better ways to give it back to society.
As a contributor I'm scoring a finished laptop (and yes, I'll be donating to the OLPC fund more than what the laptop costs). I plan to use it as an ssh client and browser.
Think about it, it's a laptop with a decent processor, ram, and storage. USB ports, speakers, decent screen, good battery life, etc, etc, etc...Only thing it lacks is storage and a serious processor (well and the keyboard is small...). But it's perfect for reading the news and ssh'ing into boxes remotely. I plan to use mine on the road en lieu of my bulkier dell laptop.
If these retailed in Canada I'd gladly pay $300 - $400 for one that ran GNU/Linux. Hell that's what people already pay for those shitty PocketPC things. So slap WinCE on it, recoup the profits to pay for $100 laptops in the other countries.
Note: they're not retailing the $100 laptops, so before anyone gets the idea of "why pay $300 when I can just nab a cheaper box" you can't unless you're planning on buying millions of them. And even then, they're not stupid enough to sell them to a corporate interest.
What I think a lot of people (who think XP would actually work) miss is that damn small linux (DSL) is the result of hundreds if not thousands of hours of development time porting OSS packages to fit (e.g. using dietlibc, changing build flags, etc). That sort of work would normally cost $$$ and would not be done for free in the XP cases as OSS developers don't have access to the source code.
Not only that, but as you alluded, a default install of XP (fresh off the CD) doesn't have anything useful [for kids]. It has no Office suite, no PDF/SVG/etc viewer, no decent web browser, no media player (that isn't corrupt), no games, no educational games/tools, etc...
Worse yet, is most commercial Windows software is written with "1GB of ram is standard, and 4GB of disk is nothing." So pretty much everything is bloatware and horribly redundant.
The OLPC box has 128MB of ram and a 512MB flash. You'd be hard pressed getting a lot of tools on there. Hell, just MS Word takes ~150MB of space. Now add on Excel, Adobe Reader, IE7 (shudder...), etc... and oops you filled up the flash without even getting to the games or the users personal storage.
Granted not all OSS is perfect either. IIRC they're leaning towards abiword/gnumeric for their document and spreadsheet tools. I'll bet because OpenOffice is too large, complicated, and requires too much memory (hey it's not perfect). They're writing their own WM to simplify the layout for kids and make it more fun to use. And various other things like that. But that's kinda the point. Because it is OSS based they are free to perform these modifications/ports without shelling out cash money.
Perhaps, but even then, the OS isn't suited for the project developers. Who's going to write the kid friendly GUI? Office tools? etc...
If the rest of the OLPC staffers are anything like the one I met, I'm sure they're all laughing their asses off at the notion of running Windows on this. The tools and applications they're gearing up for the kids are all OSS based. Porting them all to Windows would be non-trivial and provide no benefit (other than raising the cost of development not to mention introduce all sorts of new variables to the verification platform).
The only way Windows will get on the box is after shipping. Which means MSFT would pick up the sales effort, marketting, support, and development. Which even under the guise of "corrupting minors" would still cost them a pretty penny and probably get them in a world of legal trouble.
In short, I just don't see it being anything more than an intellectual exercise.
Just a heads up, there are "imports" which are made in the USA and Canada.
I personally have no problem buying or driving a non-traditionally american car. Provided it's safe, fuel efficient and gets me where I'm going I don't care who made it. Granted "fuel efficient" is a subjective scale. 40MPG is nice, for instance, but it's probably not the best our level of technology can afford us.
But I'd rather only get 40MPG than the current typical 25-30MPG most cars/suvs get.
MSFT will have a fun time selling it to the governments. "For only $300 you can have a copy of Vista CE on it!" "But, the laptop only costs $100!!!"
Not only that but I doubt OLPC will support machines running Windows. They're spending quite a bit of time porting applications to the OLPC look-and-feel (as well as making it literally fit on the device) see this for the entire tree. So what happens when in the field WinCE locks up and the device won't reboot or whatever. Does MSFT send a field agent to some remote third world nation to re-flash a schools worth of laptops?
Yeah, but then you need an office suite, a solid browser, games, media player, etc... oh and room store the kids files...
I'm sure one of the CE's would be better than XP. But since it's not free and the OLPC staffers can't hack at it (or the related office tools for instance) it's not suited for the project at all.
As a OLPC contributor (see this) and as a friend of an OLPC staffer, I have to say this is a pointless endeavour. The OLPC staff won't use Windows because it's too insecure, and isn't free.
Remember, they want to send MILLIONS of laptops into the field and avoid downtime caused by viruses, bugs, overflows, etc. The laptops are going to be hardened down quite a bit so even if a user app is exploited the laptop as a whole is still ok. They're using GNU/Linux for more reasons than the fact it costs $0 to license. They have to be able to recover from flaws in the field, of which they want to have precious few of.
And besides, even if Windows were secure, they would have to give away fully functional copies for FREE to make the budget. Even charging OLPC $1 for the license would hurt the budget ($1 * millions of laptops == no good). In short, there isn't really a "market" here other than trying to expose another generation to inferior software.
Companies like GM and Ford saw the writing on the wall for the last 20+ years about cars being more practical than luxurious. If they didn't market and advertise contrary to those notions the general public wouldn't be so adverse to the notion of a practical car. Now you have more and more people wanting practical cars and they can't sell the monstrocities fast enough.
Judging by the number of kia, toyota, honda, and the like I see on the road, practical is in. It's also interesting to note that these "import" cars are often made with more north american parts than the GM/Ford counterparts. In short, they were greedy and milked the "big bulky muscle SUV" style car too long. Now they have to redesign, retool, remarket, and win over their loyal customers with designs that are completely unlike what they had before.
Maybe if the execs had the customer in mind instead of the shareholders they"d be profitable....
Slashdot Mirror
Support? Sure => http://libtomcrypt.com/ltc113.html
... hmmm ...
...
... Also keep in mind the scale. Often you'll see huge differences in the bars and it could amounts to a 1% difference in performance (which any stats class would tell you could be lost in the noise).
Oh wait... you saw that already
Look sparkles!!! Believe what you want. Just keep in mind the "diversity" of tests they run, like "Content Creation" and "Multimedia" and
It's been QUITE a while since the last benchmark included things like thread creation, compile times, crypto operations, etc.... I wonder why that is
I'm not saying all benchmarks are shite, just that most aren't very thorough or scientific. They just run [or claim to] a suite of boxed tests and post the results. They don't actually crack out the standard deviation and other stats to tell you what the results actually mean.
And if you're "best box" is an X2 4800+ then shut your gob, that's a decent processor. What are you doing where you're really hurting for more performance anyways?
Tom
Now who is the fanboi... I wouldn't call the AMD chips mediocre. Even if they were [say] 5% slower than Intel, that's still ridiculously fast given that most people rarely stress their processors. I doubt that my parents box ever ramps up from the low 1GHz power setting for instance...
AMD processors are cheaper, and the integrated memory controller makes motherboards cheaper (my experience has been by ~10-20$).
Not to mention that the Opterons smoke Intel in HPC applications. FSB == bad.
Tom
I think you really over estimate how simple computers are. Remember, that the mouse was laughed out of the Xerox HQ when it was first proposed. You're talking about a culture who have NEVER USED a computer. Not that, they have them at the school but not at home, but that they've never touched one.
You lack objectivity because you most likely grew up in a nation which has computers (or if you're older than that simply don't remember the 60s and 70s).
As for CE, my point stands. They may use the retail sales to subsidize the educational sales. I seriously question the use in a school setting for using CE.
Tom
I own all of those boxes. [well the E6300 is an E6600 now].
The Core 2 Duo *is* a nice chip, but in terms of raw ALU performance it's no better than an Opteron (hint: it's a similar 3-pipe ALU). The FPU is a bit faster because it's natively 128-bit, but that's about it. The extra cache mostly makes up for the lack of a memory controller.
Where the C2D *does* shine is power consumption. Compared to the 90nm parts from AMD the C2D parts are much cooler, take less power, and are way easier to overclock.
Most benchmarks today are fabrications designed to peddle people over to highly advertised ladden web pages. I seriously doubt if more than half of all published benchmarks ever took place.
Tom
It's amazing that you think most benchmarks aren't skewed by corporate greed or rampant fanboy loyalty.
Also vector optimizations are not well suited to most crypto tasks. Raw ALU power is which is why there is a huge diff from the Pentium 4 to any of the other chips.
If you're really that naive, get yourself an AM2 and C2D setup and time shit yourself.
Tom
AMD ratings are max TDP not average.
For example, an Opteron 885 idles at 1GHz and consumes ~32W even though it's a 95W part.
Tom
Obviously you haven't read anything about Core2. Core2 is, on average, 20% faster at the same clockspeed as AMD's Athlon64.
No it isn't. consider this....
The Core 2 Duo has caught up, and in certain applications beat the AMD64 design, but in terms of IPC it's not really better. Where the C2D shines is power efficiency. My E6600 (2.4GHz) is running happily at 3.42GHz without overvolting or other fooling around. At this speeds I can compile, and run any crypto test I throw at it through my daily chores faster than any AMDX2 on the market. For a hell of a lot less than what the AMDFX series cost.
I imagine the AMD 65nm part is suitable for overclocking and in 2007 we'll see 3+GHz high IPC parts be standard in retail.
Tom
Dang.... nice.
:) (when my current laptop dies or just looks old).
Looking forward to my next laptop being a 65nm Turion X2 in about 2-3 years
Tom
And for every britney spears...her labels have also payola sold millions of albums.
But that money came from other artists who got swooped up in low royalty agreements with high non-refundable NRE fees.
Tom
Thank god for a more sensible drinking age (of 19). Frankly, I'd just favour stronger moving violation penalties. Get caught speeding, suspended license for a month. Get caught drunk driving, license suspended for life, etc... None of this "oh well, he was doing 90 in a 55 but it was exam week so we'll just give you a fine and let you on your way" bullshit...
Driving != right, so get over it.
Also other offenses
Cutting people off, death. High-beams on in the city, DIAF death. Running a red, entrance in the marines.
Tom
afaik it's only illegal to SERVE alcohol to minors (with few exceptions). I'm sure it's totally illegal to become drunk as a minor. Just how you accomplish that is a mystery...
Tom
copyright infringement is copyright infringement, not stealing. Just like murder isn't stealing, neither is fraud, or tax evasion. I'm sure libel isn't stealing, presenting false documentation, contempt of court, etc....
It's really hard to get all morally upright over copyright infringement when you know the crack dealing executives aren't actually sharing the profits with the artists who are the ones putting their talent and originality on the line in the first place.
Oh... that's why they call it stealing...
Tom
I'm sure you 2 year old has seen you use your computer which is why they can randomly point and click on things. These are going to a nation where even the parents have never seen a computer first hand.
As to the commit level, it doesn't matter. Any additional cost is unwanted and detrimental. Especially when there is no added value over what currently exists.
And to the comment about C/Python the problem is that Windows doesn't present a proper UNIX/POSIX layer. So many applications require things like Cygwin to work in Windows. As for the graphics, it's a frame buffer, and all of their applications are built on X11. As for sound, it's most likely ALSA based drivers.
$3 per laptop is quite a bit for this budget.
According to the CIA factbook there are 32.7 million children below the age of 14 in Mexico (one of the pilot countries). This $3 per laptop means an additional $96 million dollars to procure what some already consider an extravagent "toy." it would be totally against the best interests of this project to add this cost. And making up for it would mean making it a $97 dollar laptop. Given that the current cost per laptop is ~$147 this is not a good thing.
But even if MSFT licenses it for free (e.g. BSD style or something) who is going to write the applications? The window manager? etc. Currently all of the OLPC software is a mixture of C and Python running in a GNU/Linux environment. It would be very non-trivial to port it to Windows and make the deadline of shipping these next year.
I don't speak for the OLPC staff or project, but I seriously doubt they have any interest in switching the OS to Windows, especially this far in the game. Most likely, it's to follow some other market segment, like selling them to the first world retail market.
Tom
No moving parts is the game. So no, you can't add new ram or storage. You can get more storage via the USB ports but not ram (well other than swap).
But given the nature of the device extra ram probably won't do you much good.
it's best to think of it as an overgrown but vastly secured PocketPC style device and not a laptop.
Tom
It would be better if he didn't fund it with strings attached. Charity is supposed to be a SACRIFICE not a business plan.
A dude with that much money should really get better perspective. He's crazy wealthy. Congrats. But yet people still don't respect him, unless that is, they're on the receiving end of a large cheque. Personally, I think if I was instantly crazy wealthy I could sort out better ways to give it back to society.
Tom
As a contributor I'm scoring a finished laptop (and yes, I'll be donating to the OLPC fund more than what the laptop costs). I plan to use it as an ssh client and browser.
Think about it, it's a laptop with a decent processor, ram, and storage. USB ports, speakers, decent screen, good battery life, etc, etc, etc...Only thing it lacks is storage and a serious processor (well and the keyboard is small...). But it's perfect for reading the news and ssh'ing into boxes remotely. I plan to use mine on the road en lieu of my bulkier dell laptop.
If these retailed in Canada I'd gladly pay $300 - $400 for one that ran GNU/Linux. Hell that's what people already pay for those shitty PocketPC things. So slap WinCE on it, recoup the profits to pay for $100 laptops in the other countries.
Note: they're not retailing the $100 laptops, so before anyone gets the idea of "why pay $300 when I can just nab a cheaper box" you can't unless you're planning on buying millions of them. And even then, they're not stupid enough to sell them to a corporate interest.
Tom
*I* have an OLPC prototype. Big deal. They send them out to developers to test the thing.
Assuming the article is even accurate (and true), at best they want to see if there is other markets for the device.
OLPC + WinCE + $150 higher pricetag + Kid from first world nation == pays for $100 Redhat laptop for kid in third world nation.
Just a guess.
What I think a lot of people (who think XP would actually work) miss is that damn small linux (DSL) is the result of hundreds if not thousands of hours of development time porting OSS packages to fit (e.g. using dietlibc, changing build flags, etc). That sort of work would normally cost $$$ and would not be done for free in the XP cases as OSS developers don't have access to the source code.
Not only that, but as you alluded, a default install of XP (fresh off the CD) doesn't have anything useful [for kids]. It has no Office suite, no PDF/SVG/etc viewer, no decent web browser, no media player (that isn't corrupt), no games, no educational games/tools, etc...
Worse yet, is most commercial Windows software is written with "1GB of ram is standard, and 4GB of disk is nothing." So pretty much everything is bloatware and horribly redundant.
The OLPC box has 128MB of ram and a 512MB flash. You'd be hard pressed getting a lot of tools on there. Hell, just MS Word takes ~150MB of space. Now add on Excel, Adobe Reader, IE7 (shudder...), etc... and oops you filled up the flash without even getting to the games or the users personal storage.
Granted not all OSS is perfect either. IIRC they're leaning towards abiword/gnumeric for their document and spreadsheet tools. I'll bet because OpenOffice is too large, complicated, and requires too much memory (hey it's not perfect). They're writing their own WM to simplify the layout for kids and make it more fun to use. And various other things like that. But that's kinda the point. Because it is OSS based they are free to perform these modifications/ports without shelling out cash money.
Tom
Perhaps, but even then, the OS isn't suited for the project developers. Who's going to write the kid friendly GUI? Office tools? etc...
If the rest of the OLPC staffers are anything like the one I met, I'm sure they're all laughing their asses off at the notion of running Windows on this. The tools and applications they're gearing up for the kids are all OSS based. Porting them all to Windows would be non-trivial and provide no benefit (other than raising the cost of development not to mention introduce all sorts of new variables to the verification platform).
The only way Windows will get on the box is after shipping. Which means MSFT would pick up the sales effort, marketting, support, and development. Which even under the guise of "corrupting minors" would still cost them a pretty penny and probably get them in a world of legal trouble.
In short, I just don't see it being anything more than an intellectual exercise.
Tom
Just a heads up, there are "imports" which are made in the USA and Canada.
I personally have no problem buying or driving a non-traditionally american car. Provided it's safe, fuel efficient and gets me where I'm going I don't care who made it. Granted "fuel efficient" is a subjective scale. 40MPG is nice, for instance, but it's probably not the best our level of technology can afford us.
But I'd rather only get 40MPG than the current typical 25-30MPG most cars/suvs get.
Tom
Agreed.
MSFT will have a fun time selling it to the governments. "For only $300 you can have a copy of Vista CE on it!" "But, the laptop only costs $100!!!"
Not only that but I doubt OLPC will support machines running Windows. They're spending quite a bit of time porting applications to the OLPC look-and-feel (as well as making it literally fit on the device) see this for the entire tree. So what happens when in the field WinCE locks up and the device won't reboot or whatever. Does MSFT send a field agent to some remote third world nation to re-flash a schools worth of laptops?
Tom
Yeah, but then you need an office suite, a solid browser, games, media player, etc... oh and room store the kids files...
I'm sure one of the CE's would be better than XP. But since it's not free and the OLPC staffers can't hack at it (or the related office tools for instance) it's not suited for the project at all.
Tom
As a OLPC contributor (see this) and as a friend of an OLPC staffer, I have to say this is a pointless endeavour. The OLPC staff won't use Windows because it's too insecure, and isn't free.
Remember, they want to send MILLIONS of laptops into the field and avoid downtime caused by viruses, bugs, overflows, etc. The laptops are going to be hardened down quite a bit so even if a user app is exploited the laptop as a whole is still ok. They're using GNU/Linux for more reasons than the fact it costs $0 to license. They have to be able to recover from flaws in the field, of which they want to have precious few of.
And besides, even if Windows were secure, they would have to give away fully functional copies for FREE to make the budget. Even charging OLPC $1 for the license would hurt the budget ($1 * millions of laptops == no good). In short, there isn't really a "market" here other than trying to expose another generation to inferior software.
Tom
Companies like GM and Ford saw the writing on the wall for the last 20+ years about cars being more practical than luxurious. If they didn't market and advertise contrary to those notions the general public wouldn't be so adverse to the notion of a practical car. Now you have more and more people wanting practical cars and they can't sell the monstrocities fast enough.
Judging by the number of kia, toyota, honda, and the like I see on the road, practical is in. It's also interesting to note that these "import" cars are often made with more north american parts than the GM/Ford counterparts. In short, they were greedy and milked the "big bulky muscle SUV" style car too long. Now they have to redesign, retool, remarket, and win over their loyal customers with designs that are completely unlike what they had before.
Maybe if the execs had the customer in mind instead of the shareholders they"d be profitable....
Tom