Evolution of the Species

Connecting Buyers and Sellers

2008-06-28T09:45:00.012-05:00

Our blog is an advertisement, so we don't advertise. We are not getting paid, but we wanted to run this ad below. You can click through if you want. It works. Why wouldn't an advertiser want as many people as possible adding such ads to as many user-generated sites as possible? The 'seller' can easily track the lead source. You too can become an Internet Advertising Agency!

The framework is all here

eBay has made a good business in connecting buyers and sellers. At the same time, online fraud has continued to grow. Losses for financial institutions are significant and mirror that growth. A new medium for exchange is needed. We have been discussing this a bit lately (What is in your Wallet?).

More than a super-smart phone, but as powerful and as useful as a laptop
...with a few more special features.

The device goals have been made to match the specifications of at least the most recent Asus EeePC model – at this time the “901” model seems the best fit (the “1000” and “1000H” models differing only in screen size). Although these devices are by far the most “hyped” in today's market, there remains a stigma attached to them. They are perceived as “toys” with plastic frames, gaudy color schemes and the lack of real functionality.

The current state of the art for Netbook design has to be the HP 2133 Mini-Note, which takes a more professional aesthetic albeit with a few less features compared to the current top-of-the-line EeePC model. The HP Mini-Note also runs SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop. Our goal is also to support SLED (the next version is 11.0). We developing this now with the Freescale MPC8610 ADS and openSUSE 11.0. It should all be ready at about the same time. We want to create the aesthetic and professionalism of the HP Mini-Note and introduce a few more special features.

So, please stay tuned. After all, why should Google make all the money they do with your AdSense? Much more can still be done. Buyers want what they want when they want it. That is why search has driven Google to where it is, but what happens when 'finding' can be managed and fulfilled better. We just need the right device with the right tools and features. Everything else is in place to get more connections going.

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R&B

Cherrypal et al

2008-06-23T03:20:00.001-05:00

It is hard to keep the excitement contained. The exposure Cherrypal and THTF received last week at FTF and in the technology media woke up a few slumbering keyboards. We had a busy weekend and it appears that we will be busy for some time.

There will be many MPC5121e powered devices

A hand-held “tablet” device with basic applications such as a web browser and an email client, that enables further functionality through the playback of widgets is headed your way. The functionality of the final device will be defined by the capabilities of the SoC and peripherals chosen. The choice of peripherals will be driven by the desired feature(s). Nevertheless, the device goals are clear:

• A very low-cost, ultra-mobile and eco-friendly internet appliance
• Web 2.0 driven, but also a home for traditional apps
• Rich experience of music, movies and other forms of multimedia
• Communicate with family, friends and colleagues
• Internet-based and Peer-to-Peer gaming
• Safe, secure and protected form of computing

A variety of devices can be developed from the same basic platform and middleware. There will be many of them in lots of different configurations. Please stay tuned!

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R&B

The Net Effect

2008-06-19T07:00:00.004-05:00

The proliferation of social networking and user-generated content… combined with the impact of broadband and constant connectivity… creating new social communities and new business and consumer behaviors around the world. In the past few years… thanks to the growing availability of high-speed Internet access and search technology… user-generated content has become one of the dominant forms of global media. By 2011, social networks are projected to attract 101 million users in the U.S. …and earn 4.3 billion dollars in ad revenue. What was “child’s play” is now big business.

Freescale CEO Rich Beyer introduces the MPC5121e powered
sub-$100 laptop at the FTF2008 Keynote

A 2006 analysis by Media Metrix showed that half of MySpace users were over 35 years old… and the executive networking site, LinkedIn, reports the average user is 39-years old and has an annual income of 139 thousand dollars. 2007 saw the first Presidential debates where citizens submitted their questions as videos on YouTube. A cancer-survivor asked about healthcare reform… and a snowman asked about global warming… The debates heralded a new era in presidential politics. Online video by its nature is social and viral… and people naturally tend to forward video links to others. More than half of online video viewers forward links they find on to others… and 75 percent receiving links watch the videos that others have sent. And this model works for businesses as well… information and videos can be working for our businesses 24/7. We are definitely taking this to heart… We have established a Freescale Channel on YouTube to house videos of our product demonstrations…training tips…and customer success stories.

You can download and read the whole Keynote from the Freescale site. On the bottom of Page 20 you find the beginning of the text above. Start the Keynote video at 1:02:30...

In the meanwhile, the Register's Ashlee Vance has drawn attention to Cherrypal. Why not google the stories if you are interested. We will just have to rely on the Net Effect to carry our message for now.

Don't worry you will hear much more from us soon!

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R&B

What is in your Wallet?

2008-06-18T04:20:00.001-05:00

That is the current marketing slogan of a credit card issuer operating in the US, UK and Canada. Credit cards come in standard sizes and allow us to make purchases from merchants with money we borrow from a credit card issuer. As the card holder, we are responsible for paying the money back.

Money is certainly a useful thing to have. It provides a medium for exchange, so we don't have to barter. It gives us a means to compare the value of different items, and it can be saved to store value. Credit cards make the use of money easier. We act in partnership with the credit card issuer. They are in the business of generating profit from our interest bearing use of the money we borrow when we use the card.

This note is interesting because it actually depicts the history of money

There are many that suggest that the worldwide financial crisis we have been living through is a result of the unbridled boom in consumer borrowing and credit growth (primarily in the US, but leveraged worldwide). When things are looking up and confidence is high, people spend money and banks are happy to lend it. When they don't spend money, especially money they don't have, it makes it more difficult for the financial institutions that lend money to generate profits. Not to mention what happens when borrowers don't pay back the credits they have taken.

With the rash of worldwide bank losses (related to all those credits not paid back), bank assets are being written down. This has been a factor is driving the US Dollar to its historic lows relative to many other currencies. That is actually a good thing if the objective is to attract new capital and help increase the trade balance in the US (where the trouble started). The next step is to recapitalize the banks and then get the yield curve back to where it needs to be so banks go out and start lending money/providing credit again.

But, wait! The question is, what *will be* in your wallet when things start getting back to normal? Will we fail to the point of needing to carry shells that are broken up to make small disc beads (shown on the note above)?! Or, will we spring ahead to a new form of currency and credit? OK, maybe not new currencies, but maybe a new sort of credit built into the mobile device itself, you know, just like iTunes on the iPhone. Of course, this opportunity would be validated and managed by a new kind of service provider: banking-like services packaged with bandwidth and net access. That new money-bandwidth-storage 'lender' could come from anywhere, and why not the Solomon Islands? The weather is good.

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R&B

The Second Industrial Revolution

2008-06-13T06:50:00.004-05:00

While the first one is still in progress in parts of the world, the second is well underway. The first is measured by our physical capacity to multiply our productivity through machines and regimentation, the second is measured by our intellectual capacity to grow through free and constant access to information and learning. Personal creativity is on the rise. There is and will be a progressively compounding effect.

We need to pull down some of the old thinking too!

In an interview following the WWDC Keynote, Steve Jobs discussed Snow Leopard and the parallel-programming breakthrough that Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) was poised to make with Grand Central. Grand Central Terminal is the largest train station in the world. It is in New York. Grand Central is aptly named as the software is devised to coordinate the activity of multiple cores working of different problems simultaneously. Presumably, these chips will be designed by the former PASemi team. We discuss this in the last blog.

It is probably a mishmash, but trains and walls conjure up too much of the first industrial revolution to us. We are looking for more individual empowerment. It seems the proletariat of the processor has taken hold! The industry is being herded in this direction as single processors have been pushed to a flash point. Did we forget we could write better software?!

The MPC5121e could be considered a multi-core SoC with the AXE and MBX Lite packed in with the e300. We have learned that optimized tools are not for people that understand multicore programming. The key is to make the algorithm better and then to select the language that best translates it into a digital form the computer understands. It is an art and not what you'll develop through a pretty GUI. Likewise, programming with altivec is a special talent and draws us back to what we really want to write about today.

Last Friday, Konstantinos Margaritis gave a lecture on the subject at the University of Peiraeus. The presentations are here (.pdf) or here (.odp). Konstantinos has made more than a few presentations on altivec over the years (e.g., Debconf 5). He originally organized freevec after the altivec classes he attended at EuroSNDF in 2004 (please see last four rows). He has been busy and productive. It is great to see what a single person and a single processor can do.

Let's not forget about the capacity of the human mind to be inventive when it is free. And, please let's not forget about a single Power processor with altivec such as the MPC8610. There is much more human capital ready to invest!

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R&B

Amazingly Zippy!

2008-06-10T05:30:00.008-05:00

You can watch the Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) WWDC 2008 Keynote. If you are interested in the future of the information, communication and entertainment technology business, it is probably worth the time.

As emphasized by Steve Jobs, there are three legs to the Apple business: Mac, music and iPhone. It seems whatever the iPod was will soon be merged with the iPhone. The new $199/128€ 3G GPS-enabled iPhone will certainly help sell more Macs. The iTunes offering grows continuously and progressively (TV, movies, videos, games, talking-books, etc.). In a couple of years, it will all boil down to devices and distribution, digital that is (though contrary to convention the Apple Stores have done very well and will undoubtedly continue to do so). Apple will have much more than a cloud to depend on. We are on the road to assimilation (we have used Macs for years; we appreciate their success).

In the meanwhile, the PASemi designers now inside Apple are certainly working on the next big thing...

How much more zippy can this be?

Broadband networks allow both data and application to travel between users. If all members on a network, that is, all computers and computing devices on the network, are constructed from a common computing module then we have a totally pervasive solution - everyone can get everything, everywhere. A common computing module with a consistent structure and the same instruction set architecture (ISA) was the objective of the CELL technology. The idea was that the members of the network, e.g., clients, servers, PCs, mobile computers, game machines, PDAs, set top boxes, appliances, digital televisions and other devices, would use the same core computer processor logic to insure compatibility. The consistent modular structure would enable efficient, high speed processing of applications and data by the network's members and the rapid transmission of applications and data over the network.

Which clouds will hold your silver lining? Certainly, one that makes you amazingly zippy! It seems where the CELL technology failed, Apple took note and will make the concept work.

All this suggests a new programming model for transmitting data and applications over a network and for processing data and applications among the network's members (vs. data just being transferred between stand alone devices that must run the same application software to process and display the data sent). This was the original CELL programming model. It was to be a software CELL that was transmitted over the network for processing by any network member (some to a higher degree and some to a lesser degree). Each software CELL was to have the same structure and contain both applications and data. The "old" stuff would still work, but it needed to be compiled in a new way (Apple has done this before). What is created is a dynamic not unlike the advent of the fax machine -- to send or receive a fax you had to have one (and if you don't too bad!). This means the code for the applications *must* be based upon the same common ISA. All computing resources on such a network would have to have the same basic structure and employ the same ISA so any particular resource performing the processing can be located anywhere on the network and dynamically assigned to the activity required.

The tug-of-war for the best way to reach the consumer is underway: datacenter vs. device. Yes, ultimately it is all about everything, it is just a question of how the network is the computer. We still contend the enduser holds the terminal for every departure and arrival in their hand (@me.com by the way). The device is the conductor of the charge. There will be many clouds and some will just keep on floating by as Apple continues their lofty ascent one step at a time.

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R&B

Tundra Life

2008-06-05T03:50:00.004-05:00

Life on the tundra is tough. In the winter it is very cold and windy and in the summer the mosquitoes are everywhere. Have you ever seen a glass of water tossed into the air and watched it drift away as ice fog before a drop hits the ground? It can be cold!

A funny fellow brought this tree to Kotzebue.
Last time one of us was there it was still the only tree.

The Finnish word tunturia means a barren land (which may have been derived from the earlier use of the word in Lapland -- perhaps a Finnish friend can conform this). The tundra has a delicate ecosystem. Small changes to the environment can produce dramatic consequences over time. In Alaska, roads made through the permafrost 50-60 years ago have thawed quicker in the spring. This has led to erosion and the formation of lakes that follow an unnatural path.

This post is actually about a different Tundra. Earlier this week they made this announcement:

Ottawa, Ontario – June 3, 2008 - Tundra Semiconductor Corporation (Tundra), (TSX:TUN External), a leader in System Interconnect, has terminated its product acquisition agreement, announced in August, 2007, with IBM Global Engineering Solutions (IBM), effective June 1, 2008. The acquired product was to be based on an IBM Power Architecture™ 90 nm processor core. IBM recently notified Tundra that the performance of the core is lower than previously stated. Since the IBM core cannot meet the stated performance, the product is now unsuitable for Tundra’s intended target applications and market. In November, 2007, Tundra also signed a license agreement with IBM to bring new 65nm Power Architecture solutions to market as part of Tundra’s smart System Interconnect (sSI) strategy and roadmap. As a result of the decision to terminate the product acquisition agreement, and based on Tundra’s review of the current IBM performance data for the 65nm core, Tundra has also made the decision to terminate that license agreement.

Tundra intends to actively pursue alternative means of executing against its sSI strategy to bring intelligent System Interconnect solutions to broader global markets.

We genuinely appreciated Tundra's effort to secure a Power Architecture license (Power Up!). Another SoC producer would have added vibrancy to the delicate ecosystem around Power. Note to Power.org: we need more than standards. We need users.

The MPC5123 Starter Kit is under development. There will be a MPC5121e Starter Kit too. The 5121e includes the MBX Lite graphic core. The 5123 does not.

It sure does get cold out on the tundra, but don't worry! We still have enough people and power to keep things going. We are almost there...

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R&B

The Future of Open Source Software

2008-06-03T05:10:00.006-05:00

Fortunately, most of us will still be here tomorrow. Some of us will still be here for a long time. In the meanwhile, Managing Firm-Sponsored Open Source Communities - A Case Study on Novell and The openSUSE Project has been published. Jan Fredrik, the author, has hopefully earned high marks for his Masters thesis. It is worth reading as suggested.

Genesi has been involved since inception

Genesi has been involved in the openSUSE Project from the beginning. Prior to Novell's involvement, the first open source operating system running on the PegasosPPC was SuSE Linux 7.1 (2.4.2 kernel). Novell was an early supporter of the ODW. The main center of the openSUSE development is still in Nürnberg, Germany.

The future is unknowable, but it seems a remarkable transition is approaching. Not only is there a choice of useful and flexible open source operating systems and applications, but there is a broad commercial push toward low cost hardware. Yesterday, Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) announced it has joined the growing band of hardware makers producing low power, portable laptops. OLPC, Asus, Intel, Dell and HP have all made related and recent announcements or are shipping product already. Just how open the hardware is will become a major issue.

In our eyes, the future of open source software does not rely on the community or even a specific company/project, as much as the individual, many of them, each with their own dreams and ambitions (Go Zig!). It is our feeling that economic development is dependent on legal protection of a system of property itself firmly bound to individual ownership. It is important to distinguish between the use and the idea of property. There is a difference between a 'house' and the 'legal concept' of a house. As a concept, a house can be sold, rented, or mortgaged, while a house where you live, but you cannot establish as your own is nothing more than shelter (read up on Hernando De Soto if that last thought interests you). Companies that can provide opportunity and a framework of ownership/participation in the context of success will enable entrepreneurs to transcend governments that fail to provide safety in ownership. It could very well be a brave new world (reference to Shakespeare, not Huxley).

One more thing: in the last post we wondered what would be announced by Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) in its quarterly report. Of greatest interest to us was that for the first time in Dell's history more than half of the revenue came from outside the USA. Other than a weak dollar it will be interesting to watch how companies like Dell and Novell grow market share in emerging markets and what role open source software and local entrepreneurs will play in their strategies.

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R&B

Petrified Wood

2008-05-23T15:30:00.007-05:00

We have a very cool piece of petrified wood. It has been mistaken for last year's Bouche de Noel more than once. There is actually no wood left in petrified wood. Petrified wood is all stone.

Petrified wood can be hundreds of millions of years old!

Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) announced its latest quarterly results earlier this week. We took a few notes...

- revenue growth was less than half of what it has been.
- notebook and desktop margins and prices continue to fall.
- server revenue was flat, but HP is now #1 (IBM is #2).
- cameras margins were down.
- printers held steady, but margins were off too.
- storage revenue was up nicely (14% Y/Y).

Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) is probably not doing as well. We will find out about that next week (29 May). We are certainly watching to see how the HP-EDS merger shapes up and how that one-two punch will be taken by IBM (NYSE:IBM). With acknowledgment to Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ:JAVA) "the network is the computer" vision has come of age as utility/cloud computing/infrastructure-as-a-service is being positioned to save the industry. It is all about connecting everybody to everything...

Hey! Have you seen the new OLPC?!

The $75 OLPC v2.0 is the new Holy Grail

Oh! And, Jon Stokes published a nice article titled RISC vs. CISC in the mobile era last week. In the meanwhile, Via launched the Naked Pico Challenge. Running a 500MHz chip without cooling should not be a challenge! We are looking forward to Jon's next article on the subject. Perhaps, the EFIKA will be mentioned. Jon bought one. The EFIKA runs at nearly the same speed on a larger process (130nm vs. 90nm) and requires no heat sink. It is not a challenge to make a processor which gives that level of performance, takes ~1W of power, and does not require a heatsink. Along that same path, Tranquil PC has introduced a $82 Intel Atom motherboard, though 20W may be a drawback for some.

The trick would be to tie all this back into petrified wood, but its only the industrial thinking that is becoming petrified. Big changes are coming and it looks like Apple is still way, way out front.

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R&B

There is No Substitute for Great People

2008-05-03T12:05:00.017-05:00

Updated!

PowerDev Meeting #2 ~~is underway~~ been very successful. You ~~can~~ could watch the event in progress - webcam (Update #2). Without folks like this there would not be a Genesi.

These are great people!

The concept behind the logo is that each gear symbolizes an individual visitor or developer. If you put the gears together, that is people meeting people, a certain dynamic is achieved. There is energy and productivity - in short, you create Power.

Vielen Dank für die herausragende Unterstützung rund um den PowerPC. Alles Gute für alle Teilnehmer und viel Erfolg für bestehende und zukünftige Projekte wünscht euch das Genesi Team.

A special word of thanks to Guido Mersmann who hosted the Event...

Thank you Guido!

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R&B

...and thanks to Gerald for the translation support - he is pretty super too!

The Race is...

2008-04-25T06:30:00.006-05:00

...still on!

As most of you know, the 5121e integrates the POWERVR MBX and POWERVR VGP Lite 2D/3D acceleration with Freescale's Display Integration Unit (DIU). The graphics core is integrated with the e300 core and built on Power Architecture™ technology.

The 5121e also has the AXE engine

We are really getting the support we need to develop a great board with a solid package of tools and documentation. We are building on our PegasosPPC/ODW and EFIKA/Open Client experiences. The new system will be supported by what will be known as mobileGT Linux. We will also work to provide MorphOS and AROS support. There will be a QNX option. With the FreeBSD EFIKA port just awarded a slot in Google Summer of Code 2008, who knows what can happen if you keep the engine going and the front runners in view. Go, Team. Go!

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R&B

power2people Take Two

2008-04-23T01:15:00.008-05:00

...and action!

power2people to Support AROS

We did not expect to read about it this this fast. We certainly have not made over power2people.org yet. An update is coming...

power2people was established to support a Project we originally started with Cornell University Graduate Students in 2006 around the EFIKA/Open Client (Genesi BoP Presentation). This merged with an EFIKA Project and an installation was made last summer in Morocco (EFIKA Project #338). Just Enough Computing was presented by Johan Dams at the International Workshop on Ambient Intelligence and Embedded Systems in Vaasa, Finland last September (presentation, paper). We featured Johan's Project in a few blogs and received some support from the OpenSPARC Marketing Team -- Thank You Sun Microsystems. Unfortunately, the U.S. State Department only funded the first phase of the Project. It has not gone further. It was a great Project.

More recently, we wrote a blog that anticipates a synthesis between our experiences and the experience of Mary Lou Jepsen who has left OLPC to form Pixel Qi. Pixel Qi will be working with Genesi on the new 5121e/5123 reference design we are developing with Freescale. Freescale announce the new SoC, reference design and starter kit at the Embedded Systems Conference last week (Freescale PR). We are really looking forward to working with Mary Lou.

We will be refining power2people.org to reflect the support we will be providing the AROS Community. It will all tie together to hopefully give low cost open source based computing another OS alternative. We hope to have this done by the time Bill Evans releases the AROS EFIKA port in May (before the 18th). We also expect that our support for AROS will help the NATAMI Project. AROS support for NATAMI and the Freescale ColdFire platform is also an objective.

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R&B

Target Growth

2008-04-15T02:30:00.007-05:00

When we began to focus on growth markets for the EFIKA it was early 2005. What we wanted was a general purpose host processor that could address the opportunities we saw coming for low-cost PCs, mobile Internet devices, consumer electronics and embedded systems. The possibilities all looked the same to us. We set off to find a way to satisfy many opportunities simultaneously.

Last month Paul Otellini estimated that these four markets were worth $10 billion each. He made this observation as he discussed Intel's new Silverthorne processor. He concluded that the key to these markets was to create a common processor architecture that OEMs and ISVs could use to build both hardware and software for these four markets without having to radically change the platform and allow vendors to bring new a range of new products to market much faster.

The new Freescale dual-core MPC5123 SoC

Yesterday, Freescale announced the MPC5123. Genesi is launching a better way to address all the opportunity with the MPC5123 starter kit and a made-to-order version of Linux optimized for the SoC. We target growth. We intend to support other operating systems, as well as other Freescale processors. If the opportunities are good enough for Intel, they are certainly good enough for an Open Power Architecture. After all, AURA is System Enablement.

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R&B

PowerDev Meeting #2

2008-04-11T04:00:00.002-05:00

PowerDev Meeting #2 is just a couple of weeks away. The Event has been included on the Freescale Training Event Schedule. The number of participants registered has already exceeded our expectations. European visitors are coming from as far away as Norway. Incredibly, a Developer from Malaysia is traveling from Asia to attend.

The concept behind the logo is that each gear symbolizes an individual visitor or developer. If you put the gears together, that is people meeting people, a certain dynamic is achieved. There is energy and productivity - in short, you create Power.

We are looking forward to the Event!

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R&B

New Wine New Wineskins

2008-04-07T07:00:00.003-05:00

5121e, ColdFire and 8610

We have three new platforms coming, well actually four, but those details are still to come. It is a great thing to feel the excitement building. We are going to do a few things different this time.

...and all outside of CHRP (...at least as far as the Linux kernel is concerned).

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R&B

Go for Gold!

2008-04-02T02:30:00.015-05:00

Genesi is a Gold Sponsor at the Freescale Technology Forum

Best of Show Nominee - MorphOS on the EFIKA

Please stop by!

If you missed PowerDev Meeting #1, please stop by PowerDev Meeting #2 or FTF 2008. The Latest and Greatest is coming...

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R&B

PowerDev Meeting #1

2008-04-01T07:30:00.003-05:00

PowerDev Meeting #1 was held this past weekend in Chełm, Poland. Grzegorz Kraszewski gave a number of presentations that were well received by those present.

DigiBooster 3 Presentation and Discussion

We will be posting a video of his presentations later this week along with a gallery of pictures. Our thanks to Grzegorz for his time and effort and a special word of thanks to Jerzy Guc, Darek Wróblewski, and Łukasz Kucharuk, who planned and managed the Event.

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PowerDeveloper Projects

2008-03-29T18:00:00.001-05:00

The ColdFire, MPC8610 and MPC5121E Projects are now open.

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OpenPowerArchitecture

2008-03-28T09:30:00.004-05:00

The ColdFire, MPC8610 and MPC5121E Project Programs will open for proposals later today.

Please check the detailed Project submission guidelines now posted on PowerDeveloper.

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All for One and One for All

2008-03-27T08:30:00.005-05:00

The OLPC organization created the XO laptop and delivered the laptop from an idea to mass-production. OLPC has hit some bumps in the road and created a few on their own, but hundreds of thousands of units have shipped. That is an accomplishment. Perhaps, one of the most notable features is the sunlight-readable low-power LCD designed by Mary Lou Jepsen.

XO, please meet EFIKA
EFIKA, please meet XO.

We are creating a new reference design for the Freescale MPC5121e. We intend to include a Pixel Qi display as part of the reference design (internally connected on the board). This will be something different than One Laptop or even Any Laptop Per Child. Using the internet backbone, this is also phone -- with bandwidth it will handle video too. We are also thinking about national infrastructure. This package could serve as a platform to develop voting machines, public transportation ticket vending, social security/medical record point-of-user management, etc., etc., etc.

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R&B

ColdFire Developer Program Begins

2008-03-26T09:00:00.001-05:00

Check back on PowerDeveloper later today or tomorrow. The first systems are on the way to FedEx.

These are headed to Germany...
More to follow!

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R&B

It's the Real Thing!

2008-03-24T06:45:00.002-05:00

*Emulation Not Required*

Thomas Hirsch began with a simple concept: get Amiga up-to-date and so The NATAMI Project was born. We have been tracking the Project and providing moral support from inception. Long-time ODW-Developer Gunnar von Boehn stepped in early to help drive the software development. Thomas and Gunnar have done a great job bringing the Project to where it is today. Now, we are gearing up for more involvement.

The first prototype

The Project is interesting to us for a number of reasons. There is a bit of a convergence happening beyond bringing the Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA) to an FPGA. The question is can we bring the whole package into an SoC.

Gerald, Dave, Bill (left to right)

Dave was the lead designer of the 68020 some years ago at Motorola. Gerald and Thomas Knäbel created the Cyberstorm PPC and the BlizzardPPC. Lately, we have been busy with the e300 core (MPC5200b and MPC5121e -- we have two new MPC5121e reference designs on the way), as well as an ARM9 development for Toshiba, but we should have enough time and knowledge to devote ourselves to this noteworthy endeavor. Please stay tuned, or better, join us at PowerDev Meeting #2. We will do our best to have a NATAMI/ColdFire (MCF54455) demonstration and Thomas and/or Gunnar at the Event.

The objective now is to confirm all that all the software will work on the 68020 descendant and get development systems to the right PowerDevelopers.

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R&B

Happy Easter!

2008-03-23T01:12:00.000-05:00

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R&B

Winning Bid?

2008-03-19T08:30:00.005-05:00

It should be a matter of days before we all know the results. In the USA, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) has auctioned off a spectrum of frequencies that can transmit and receive data to and from a new generation of mobile devices. It is expected that the new networks will carry signals farther and better with less power than their predecessors. Certainly AT&T and Verizon as mobile network leaders can be expected to have gained licenses, but we wonder about Google.

Attention! Attention!
The network is the Android!
The network is the Android!
Attention! Attention!

Google seems to have won already. Early in the process, the folks from Google were able to influence the conditions of the opportunity by insisting that the FCC require winning bidders provide 'open' networks. This means that the new network operators will need to offer options on the device and the network separately. There should be a slew of connection and/or device options. The thinking goes that potential device-network independence will engender innovation and better possibilities for consumers.

Search, ads and apps have dramatically changed the nature of the communication-computing business. What part of 'ad' is not communication? Connecting buyers and sellers is the name of the game, be it a service or a product. Have you seen Gears for Mobile? We communicate better in all our senses from wherever we are.

BTW, notebook computer sales rose 41% in 2007 (DisplaySearch), outselling desktops at Dell (for example) at roughly 6:1. Acer has passed Dell as the #2 notebook supplier thanks to the acquisition of Gateway and Packard Bell. HP is still #1. When will the new network operators start selling laptop-wireless connection bundles? How long will it take AT&T to start selling an iPhone-iPod-MacBook-hardware/software-connection-anywhere all packaged into one bundle? 4Q 2007 shows Apple gaining steadily on RIM in the smartphone market.

Attention! Attention!
The network is the iSomething!
All your base are belong to us!
Attention! Attention!

Innovation needs more bidding for the customer to keep winning. In the meanwhile, Apple is way, way out front. There is definitely something to be said for a fully integrated hardware/software enterprise capable system.

The Community is the Computer - a Super Computer. Go Zig!

R&B

PowerDev Meeting #1

2008-03-15T08:15:00.002-05:00

The first PowerDev Meeting will be held in Chełm, Poland.

Please stop by and read all about it: PowerDev Meeting, March 29 - 30, 2008. Better yet, stop by for the weekend!

As an added bonus, we will do our best to also have both MPC5121e and MPC8610 boards there in time for the Event. A big word of thanks go to the organizing team, Jerzy Guc, Łukasz Kucharuk and Darek Wróblewski. We also want to recognize Grzegorz Kraszewski (EFIKA Project #163), who will be making the principle presentations and Guido Mersmann (EFIKA Project #341) who developed the MorphOS-based Media Center.

Don't worry if you miss this Event. There will be a second PowerDev Meeting coming soon to Germany and others will follow. Please send us an email if you are interested in organizing a PowerDev Meeting where you are.

The Community is the Computer - a Super Computer. Go Zig!

R&B