A pair of engineers in Singapore, Andrew "Bunny" Huang and Sean Cross, have developed a working laptop which was designed to be completely open sourced, with no proprietary drivers or software of any kind. The Novena laptop is powered by a Cortex A9 and an FPGA and runs Debian, even communications are handled by a software-defined radio board. This is more of a proof of concept than a marketable machine but the links at The Register will take you to the details on how you could build one yourself. Even the bezel is open source and modifiable, it is a laptop with an upgradable screen!
"This week, the pair developing the Novena open laptop have provided an update on their work. The idea is to develop a usable system that is completely open to customization and scrutiny – from the electronics to the firmware to the operating system to the applications."
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
- Ex-Microsoft craft ale buffs rattle tankard for desktop brewery @ The Register
- Siri Won't Answer Some Questions If You're Not Subscribed To Apple Music @ Slashdot
- Microsoft fires Arrow, it's first official Android Launcher @ The Inquirer
I think now that the
I think now that the PC/Laptop/tablet market has matured and the sales growth figures will never again be above the low single digits, sales are currently shrinking, that it’s Time for the upgradable laptop market to begin. The markets are now in a state of decline and at best will just maintain! So getting market share and holding on will force the market to innovate more, starting with some non M$ OS, non Intel based laptop hardware where Users can purchase a laptop enclosure and add whatever Screen, CPU, and other features to a standard laptop motherboard, and build a laptop system like the PC market allows for desktops. There are already Kits to allow for the Raspberry Pi to be made into a mini laptop, and users/suppliers can order a Custom Pi SKUs in batches of 1000 or more.
I expect that one of the makers in the far East will begin to market Kit based laptops like this one, with open standards based hardware simply because the BIOS and other hardware development costs can be supported by an entire market with every manufacturer sharing in the costs of developing the Firmware/Software(Linux/Other open OS based). They are working on Modular/Upgradeable phones, so laptops will follow.
Do not discount the ARM based laptop market, as the custom ARMv8a ISA based designs are getting even more powerful! AMDs K12 custom SKU was designed using the same core execution engine in hardware that the Zen cores will use, and it’s only the K12 was made to execute the ARMV8a ISA. So AMD’s K12 will probably add SMT capabilities to the custom ARM market CPU cores. If Jim Keller is actually Now At Samsung, then expect that Samsung’s Custom ARM cores will benefit even more, and start to become more like IBM’s Powre8 RISC cores in actual abilities.
IBM’s RISC cores are a bit More powerful than the current ARM custom RISC cores, but it does not have to remain that way! Potentially anyone with the resources(Samsung) can hire a top CPU architecture engineer and make an ARMv8a ISA running custom core with a power8 style extra wide order superscalar design, and get up to 8 threads per core with each core having 14 execution pipelines like the power8 has. Expect that the Custom ARM cores properly engineered with comparable execution resources to x86 designs to make for fine laptop SKUs running open OSs, to go along with Industry Standard open BIOS firmware that the entire market will use and save money on R&D and engineering.
It’s kinda sad that this is
It’s kinda sad that this is the exception rather than the rule.
This is a great concept. I
This is a great concept. I would love to build one