
ARM64 Open Laptop Concept - edward
http://wiki.vero-apparatus.com/ARM64OpenLaptopConcept
======
gasull
Related: Novena laptop, desktop and standalone board

[https://www.crowdsupply.com/kosagi/novena-open-
laptop](https://www.crowdsupply.com/kosagi/novena-open-laptop)

[http://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena_Main_Page](http://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena_Main_Page)

~~~
Chirael
Related to that: [http://www.bunniestudios.com](http://www.bunniestudios.com)
I'd forgotten it was called Novena but remembered Jacob Applebaum saying
something about a "bunny" laptop with open source hardware :)

At some point virtually everyone has to "trust" something (e.g. That component
X wasn't diverted/modified between purchase and arrival). However a set of
open source, "many eyeballs" laptops would be a big win for privacy IMO.

------
otoburb
AMD's A1100 is supposed to be "around 2.5x faster than AMD’s current low-power
Jaguar-based server chip (the Opteron X2150), while maintaining the same
TDP."[1] The X2150 seems to operate within 11-25W.[2]

On paper, this sounds like a thermal envelope that could still work within a
12.5" laptop like the venerable X220, although noted that the A1100 doesn't
actually come with on-board video. Also, the A1100 dev kits seems to be
currently packaged only for mini-ATX. Will all this actually somehow fit in an
X220 chassis?

[1] [http://www.extremetech.com/computing/175583-amd-unveils-
its-...](http://www.extremetech.com/computing/175583-amd-unveils-its-first-
arm-based-cpu-the-64-bit-8-core-opteron-a1100)

[2]
[http://www.amd.com/Documents/Kyoto2150_QRG.pdf](http://www.amd.com/Documents/Kyoto2150_QRG.pdf)

~~~
exDM69
Yes, this particular choice of hardware sounds strange to me too, this CPU is
intended for low power servers, isn't it? There are tons of ARM system on
chips in 1..5W power envelope and have built-in video, audio and USB.

Also sentences like "Hardware choices will opt for longer battery life rather
than 3D graphics performance" confuse me. The chips that have high 3D
performance also usually have very low power consumption. Albeit in this case
it will be problematic to find any kind external graphics chip, I assume the
CPU has a PCI-e bus and they will have to pick a discrete PC laptop GPU.

There's a further problem with ARM chips. Unlike x86, where there's some kind
of a standard for peripherals and software (ie. the PC "standard"), all ARM
SoCs have very diverse configurations. There's no standard pin layouts, no
standard "chipsets", no standard BIOS or bootloaders. All IRQs are different,
memory maps vary, and standards like ACPI for power management, etc do not
really exist.

I really wish that there were ARM-based low power laptops with as much open
source firmware/drivers/kernel as possible, but unfortunately, this project
does not seem very realistic to me. I hope that future ARM-based devices will
have a better ecosystem and standards for building a complete computer around
the CPU without being married to the software and hardware of the particular
SoC vendor.

disclosure: I work for an ARM SoC manufacturer

~~~
jsnell
An underpowered phone SOC with a closed GPU requiring binary blobs sure sounds
like a great fit for a project whose goal is making an _open laptop_.

I've used multiple attempts at ARM-based laptops / two-in-ones. So far they've
been all been painfully slow. If they're targeting a x220 chassis, the
constraints are going to be completely different from anything a consumer ARM
SOC is ever deployed on. The standard battery on that is 63Wh, and it used 35W
TDP CPUs. If there's a chip that can get laptop performance rather than phone
performance, it makes perfect sense to spend at least a little bit of that
massive thermal and power budget on it.

~~~
exDM69
Perhaps the higher power tablet chips (ie. closer to 5-10 Watts TDP) could be
a nice alternative? FWIW, I have used desktop Linux on a ~2012 ARM tablet chip
and it wasn't fast but still a decent experience.

I'd be more worried about finding any sort of decent graphics chip. The
discrete laptop chips tend to be for gamers (ie. high power) because all Intel
laptop CPUs have an integrated GPU in them anyway (for mainstream customers).
And sourcing discrete GPUs in small numbers is going to be difficult. Add in a
requirement for open source drivers and it's even more difficult.

~~~
sharpneli
With luck AMD eventually bundles one of these with a small integrated GPU.
They have somewhat well working Open Source drivers already.

------
4ad
I don't understand the comments in this thread at all. This is an ARM64 chip.
All comparisons with ARM chips are pointless and all suggestions that they
should have used the X or Y ARM chip instead are missing the point.

~~~
robryk
What are the advantages of ARM64 over 32bit ARM?

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Zigurd
What do governments in China and Russia use for high-security computing? There
seems to be a valuable un-addressed market, or back doors in hardware don't
exist, or back doors in hardware have been too hard to find, even for
governments with the resources to conduct a search.

~~~
eksith
I suspect it's some type of system where they're even able to inspect the
BIOS.

Speaking of... Richard Stallman uses the Lemote Yeelong because even its BIOS
is open source[1]. The specs are a bit behind, but for his purposes, it seems
to work well.

[1]
[http://richard.stallman.usesthis.com/](http://richard.stallman.usesthis.com/)

~~~
mattst88
I saw him speak last night, and he had what looked like a Thinkpad X60 --
[http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/ibm-lenovo-
thinkpad-x60-c...](http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/ibm-lenovo-
thinkpad-x60-coreboot/)

~~~
eksith
If that's true, then he picked very well. The X60 is pretty close to being my
all time favorite kit. It's easier to carry around and packs more kick than an
older Atom (certainly with Linux). I can see why he would choose it.

I actually haven't heard of LibreBoot before. Seems like a very ambitious
project, but fits perfectly with RMS' beliefs
[http://www.libreboot.org/](http://www.libreboot.org/)

------
ralmidani
I currently use the Samsung Chromebook 2 with Ubuntu via Crouton, and it runs
nicely. But it's not the same as running a full GNU+Linux system with free
software and hardware, and the on-board 16 gigs of storage is rather limiting.
I would be all over this if the motherboard were made available.

~~~
lgeek
You can boot your own kernel directly to a GNU/Linux rootfs. If you need more
space, high speed SD cards work quite nicely.

~~~
ralmidani
I've tried Chrubuntu and it doesn't work as well as Crouton. The wifi,
specifically, is flaky. Have you had better luck with the Chromebook 2
specifically?

~~~
lgeek
It's been a while since I've used it and it turns out it's a first generation
Samsung Chromebook (XE303). I don't remember having any WiFi-related issues.

The source code used to build the kernel for ChromeOS should be available so
I'm surprised this sort of thing is a problem.

------
acd
I think we should hack together an open serviceable laptop like Google Project
Ara but for laptops.

So you can fix your screen, you can upgrade your memory you can upgrade the
motherboard and cpu change storage, upgrade to never wifi standards when they
are available.

~~~
q3k
Most Thinkpad T/X/W models (well, ones that haven't been turned into cheap
Macbook clones by Lenovo) do this. Same for older Dell Latitudes and IIRC some
HPs.

The machine I'm writing from (a Thinkpad X220) has had its' screen changed to
an IPS, the HDD replaced with an SSD, they keyboard replaced to one with a
different layout (GB->US), the RAM increased to 16G, the battery replaced to a
9-cell, a 3G modem added and 2x USB3.0 ports added via a ExpressCard module.
All done based on a service manual from Lenovo.

High-end and professional laptops used to be very servicable and upgradeable,
until the recent trend of form-over-function became popular (I'm looking at
you, Macbooks and Intel Ultrabooks).

------
higherpurpose
UEFI over the opensource Coreboot?

~~~
lgeek
Tianocore EDK2, which they plan on using, is the reference UEFI implementation
and is BSD-licensed. ARM actually develops and maintains the ARM-specific
parts of the implementation.

~~~
robryk
Some people (e.g. authors of [1]) consider the UEFI reference implementation
to be of poor quality. There was an exploitable (for privilege escalation from
typical userspace administrator to system management mode) integer overflow
there, and it wasn't a particularly tricky one[1].

[1]
[https://www.mitre.org/sites/default/files/publications/14-22...](https://www.mitre.org/sites/default/files/publications/14-2221-extreme-
escalation-presentation.pdf)

------
timthorn
Looks like there might be videos of some of the team presenting at this
weekend's mini DebConf put online in the coming days:
[https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/Miniconf-
UK/2014#Saturday_sess...](https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/Miniconf-
UK/2014#Saturday_session_-_PROVISIONAL_SCHEDULE)

Of note: "[Vero Apparatus] is a small group of people who are working on what
they think is an under-provisioned niche in the computer market: full-power
ARM-powered laptops. Daniel will be presenting their plans."

------
knappador
How about Nvidia's Denver chip? The single-core performance will really help
web-browsing and I bet the power is very good for long battery life. ASUS
zenbooks have a great chassis. My 2c.

------
patcon
Isn't the x220 a tablet?

[http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series-
table...](http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series-
tablet/x220tablet/)

Seems an odd choice. Not something I'd want to own :/

EDIT: nm. there's a non-tablet version, just no page on main site:
[http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd015812](http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd015812)

~~~
mng2
X-series tablet models have a 'T' at the end.

------
ck2
I get the desire for DIY but why not just adopt an existing low cost hardware
device and hack at it until it is extremely well documented?

Commercial hardware always becomes dirt cheap compared to small production
custom stuff.

This month for the holidays there are $10 arm based smartphones that are
pretty darn powerful (dual core 1.2ghz). No DIY project could ever match that.

~~~
lgeek
There's very little ARM hardware in a laptop form factor in general, none of
it is ARM64, and the ones that exist are mostly chromebooks, so maybe not the
best build quality.

------
octotoad
Hate to nitpick, but; spell-check.

------
imrehg
I'd totally try this!

