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OLPC now using VIA processors

Apr 20, 2009
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This announcement is interesting. I actually wondered when olpc was first announced what the appeal was of the geode, and figured it came down to “we get them ridiculously cheap if we buy them in volume”. The geode is a pretty dire processor when it comes to performance. The C7 isn’t exactly much to write home about either, but comparing them both is like night and day.

As well as the noticable performance boost, olpc 1.5 will get for free: SSE, SSE2, a hardware RNG, hardware accelerated encryption, hardware NX (though this would require PAE to be enabled, which may be considered unncessary overhead on an XO), and frequency/voltage scaling.

If they had done this on day 1, I may have been more interested in using one. My one experience with a 1.0 XO was possibly the most miserable computing experience I recall.

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  1. katzj  •  Apr 20, 2009 @13:45

    The thing that I’m wondering is how much of this hardware is actually well supported with open drivers given the lack of engineering present @ olpc these days.

  2. dilinger  •  Apr 20, 2009 @14:22

    Actually, the cs5536 does have a RNG and hardware AES support. See drivers/crypto/geode-aes.c and drivers/char/hw_random/geode-rng.c.

    There was also a way to do frequency scaling by plugging in values in an MSR, but it wasn’t officially sanctioned by AMD (no stability guarantees).

    Quite frankly, I thought the Geode processor was Good Enough for what it was intended for. What was really lacking was RAM (256MB just wasn’t enough for something like firefox w/ a bunch of tabs) and GL support (3D support just isn’t there). The other missing components included a usable touchpad (which should be fixed in 1.5), a decently sized keyboard, and a larger screen. Sadly, the lack of adult-sized keyboard and screen will probably keep me from being able to retire my x40 in favor of an XO.