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Building my Own Laptop

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Re: Building my Own Laptop

#71

Post by robomartin »

haldean wrote: post #66
robomartin wrote: post #65

Unless things changed in the last few years HDMI requires a non-trivial license fee of $5,000 to $15,000, if I remember correctly. There's also a per-unit fee. If you are not a signatory of the contract you can't buy HDMI chips. How are they getting around that?

Yup, $10k/year and $.15/unit. It doesn't look like it's mandatory, though; the language on the site[0] is really hard to decipher. I imagine that they're not going to prosecute one guy for using a chip in his personal build. Obviously the Raspberry Pi guys are getting around this somehow, though; I'd be curious to know how. [0]: http://www.hdmi.org/manufacturer/adopter_registration.aspx

I ran into this about five years ago when doing a design that required HDMI I/O. Distributors in the US such as Avnet and Arrow wanted to see confirmation of being under contract to be able to buy chips. I don't remember all the details. I think you get access to sample quantities just for signing the contract but anything else required payment of the big fee. Also, you couldn't get access to some data sheets without proof of being under contract.

I can easily imagine that things in Asia could be very, very different due to, shall we say, how loosely IP rights are enforced there.

Re: Building my Own Laptop

#72

Post by jrockway »

robomartin wrote: post #71
haldean wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, $10k/year and $.15/unit. It doesn't look like it's mandatory, though; the language on the site[0] is really hard to decipher. I imagine that they're not going to prosecute one guy for using a chip in his personal build. Obviously the Raspberry Pi guys are getting around this somehow, though; I'd be curious to know how. [0]: http://www.hdmi.org/manufacturer/adopter_registration.aspx

I ran into this about five years ago when doing a design that required HDMI I/O. Distributors in the US such as Avnet and Arrow wanted to see confirmation of being under contract to be able to buy chips. I don't remember all the details. I think you get access to sample quantities just for signing the contract but anything else required payment of the big fee. Also, you couldn't get access to some data sheets without…

Are IP rights enforced at all in China?

Re: Building my Own Laptop

#73

Post by otoburb »

Perhaps RMS will either contract Bunnie to create a replica for him, or he'll use Bunnie's open schematics to create his own. Then he can upgrade from his Yeeloong laptop or at least have an alternative with a bigger screen.

From what I recall, one of RMS's concerns was open firmware, which Bunnie has as one of the project goals.

Re: Building my Own Laptop

#74

Post by joezydeco »

haldean wrote: post #66
robomartin wrote: post #65

Unless things changed in the last few years HDMI requires a non-trivial license fee of $5,000 to $15,000, if I remember correctly. There's also a per-unit fee. If you are not a signatory of the contract you can't buy HDMI chips. How are they getting around that?

Yup, $10k/year and $.15/unit. It doesn't look like it's mandatory, though; the language on the site[0] is really hard to decipher. I imagine that they're not going to prosecute one guy for using a chip in his personal build. Obviously the Raspberry Pi guys are getting around this somehow, though; I'd be curious to know how. [0]: http://www.hdmi.org/manufacturer/adopter_registration.aspx

Aren't the chipmakers like Broadcom (for rPi) and Freescale (the i.MX in Bunnie's design) taking the burden of this licensing fee? It would be a lot easier for them to roll the $0.15 into their part costs than hassle their customers with taking care of this licensing.

Re: Building my Own Laptop

#75

Post by joezydeco »

JDuMond wrote: post #20

It's great to see that dedicated hackers can get their hands on the hardware and data-sheets needed to design and manufacture these kind of high performance projects. There still remains one huge barrier before we'll see a large number of projects like this: the costs of the equipment used to validate the signal integrity on high speed digital systems like this immense. I'm hoping that soon enough Moore's law will wo…

Bunnie is taking advantage of the massive scale of these SoC systems like the i.MX. There really isn't a lot of exotic signal line design needed to make these chips run. From my own knowledge of board design with this Freescale part, the only tricky layout would be the DDR3 RAM lines. The rest is wiring up I/O to the necessary connectors and discretes.

TI even made it easier by mounting their DRAM in package-on-package ball grid. You can find the TI OMAP4 Pandaboard schematics online and see how simple their system design is.

Re: Building my Own Laptop

#76

Post by Zak »

jarek wrote: post #60
flashmob wrote: post #53

Ultimate hackers laptop would be one without a wide-screen! Bring back the 4:3 displays that we had in the old day please. These were good for reading and editing text/code. You can't buy any decent laptop without a wide-screen, so you will have no competition in this area.

> You can't buy any decent laptop without a wide-screen You can - just not a new one. There's plenty that can still be done with a T60p with a C2D and 3 GB of RAM.

Yes. For starters, you can put in a T61 motherboard (14" 4:3 model only, and avoid Nvidia GPUs - they're all defective) and 8GB of RAM. Minor alterations to the frame are required.

Re: Building my Own Laptop

#77

Post by sbierwagen »

zanny wrote: post #54
6ren wrote: post #51

Moore's law is not decelerating - transistor density is doubling on schedule, with process shrinks happening like clockwork. Smartphone performance has actually been doubling yearly - better than Moore's Law. If there are fewer transistors, it's because we haven't worked out how to use them effectively; or they aren't demanded by customers. If not in demand, other ways of improving performance won't be in demand. It'…

People think inverse Moores Law is slowing with Intel, but Intel has just been committing more and more die in their chips to onboard graphics. I wonder how Ivy Bridge E will perform with 435mm wafers, though Sandy Bridge E was kind of a let down (I'd imagine that is more architecture shortfalls with 1/4 the cores shut off). But yeah, consumer demand just mandates something that can run a web browser as fast as IO ba…

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Re: Building my Own Laptop

#78

Post by Too »

jakeonthemove wrote: post #42
pasbesoin wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm not up to speed on the latest developments, but I currently have two laptops whose batteries have essentially been reduced to short duration UPS's. I should be more pro-active, but I forget, or I worry that I'll discharge right before I need to be charged up. And one sits on a spare table, doing its thing all by itself, much of the time. They tend to stay plugged in and on overnight. It would be nice if, e.…

That's very weird: my laptops stay plugged and on 24/7 for months at a time, and the batteries still last around 2.5 hours. These are 4 year old Li-Ion batteries I'm talking about (they used to last 3 hours when they were new).

Same experience here, i kept my laptop in a socket almost every day for 2 years only bringing it out maybe once a month. The battery was as good as new until i forgot it completely uncharged for 2 weeks when it overnight reduced its 2h capability into more like 2 minutes.

Re: Building my Own Laptop

#80

Post by CamperBob2 »

marshray wrote: post #9

I liked the part (literally) about the Xilinx Spartan 6 FPGA. Who knows what kind of cool stuff that could lead to?

Not much, considering he didn't bother to add a fast/wide external bus for it.

Very frustrating, and surprising considering who is spearheading this design.

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