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Novena: Open Source Hardware laptop launches!

fustini


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Open Source Hardware laptop from Bunnie has launched!  Hackaday reports:

[Bunnie] Launches the Novena Open Laptop


Today [Bunnie] is announcing the launch of the Novena Open Laptop. When we first heard he was developing an open source laptop as a hobby project, we hoped we’d see the day where we could have our own. Starting today, you can help crowdfund the project by pre-ordering a Novena.


The Novena is based on the i.MX6Q ARM processor from Freescale, coupled to a Xilinx Spartan 6 FPGA. Combined with the open nature of the project, this creates a lot of possibilities for using the laptop as a hacking tool. It has dual ethernet, for routing or sniffing purposes. USB OTG support lets the laptop act as a USB device, for USB fuzzing and spoofing. There’s even a high speed expansion bus to interface with whatever peripheral you’d like to design.


The crowd funding campaign has kicked off on Crowd Supply:

Crowd Supply: Novena


A new open-hardware computing platform, flexible and powerful, designed for use as a desktop, laptop, or standalone board.

 

It looks like its off to a strong start.  Already at $57,715 raised of $250,000 goal with 45 days left.

 

Cheers,

Drew

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  • UPDATE: just noticed this image

    • Freescale iMX6 CPU
      • Quad-core Cortex A9 CPU with NEON FPU @ 1.2 GHz
      • NDA-free datasheet and programming manual

    Also, , this is a laptop with a built in user programmable FPGA!

  • in reply to fustini

    Drew Fustini wrote:

     

    Also, John Beetem, this is a laptop with a built in user programmable FPGA!

     

    Yes, I noticed that when I first read about Bunnie's OSHW laptop.  Unfortunately, to design with the Spartan 6 you have to use Xilinx tools -- there are no open source tools available because Xilinx does not provide enough information for people to write their own FPGA design tools.  Also, the Xilinx tools only run on x86 AFAIK, so you can't run them on Novena -- you still need a separate x86 PC.  OTOH, the tools are free-as-in-beer image

     

    Now that that's out of the way, I saw Bunnie's talk yesterday at the San Jose Embedded Systems Conference AKA EE Live!  [Update: Here's what I remember most from it.]  It was a great talk, and predicts a new Golden Age of OSHW.  Bunnie's reason for this is that Moore's Law is finally slowing down for real.  While it will still be possible to cram more transistors on a chip each year, it's no longer the case that this is going to save money.  This means that current technology is going to last much, much longer rather than being replaced with something better, faster, cheaper in 18 months.

     

    While Moore's Law benefited consumers with cheaper, more capable (YMMV) products, it had some nasty side-effects:

     

    1.  It wasn't worth while for individuals or small groups to do interesting, innovative products like Novena because once they were finished Moore's Law would have made them obsolete.

     

    2.  It wasn't worth while designing and building interesting new computer architectures, because by the time you were done regular PCs would have caught up and surpassed you.

     

    3.  It wasn't worth while designing software well, and carefully optimizing it to make it efficient, because by the time you were done regular PCs would be twice as fast and nobody would notice your improvements.

     

    4. It wasn't worth designing hardware to last, because it would be functionally obsolete within a couple years.

     

    All of these reverse with Moore's Law slowing down.  Suddenly small groups can do interesting things like Novena, new, special-purpose architectures become practical since newer PCs won't be much faster than existing ones, and writing good software will be worthwhile again.  Plus, it will be worth repairing tech rather than throwing it away because the new product wouldn't be much better.

     

    Novena is designed with the above in mind.  It's not cheap, especially the chassis.  OTOH, it's designed to last, especially the chassis.  It's designed to be easy to swap out the main board, battery, and other components so that you end up with a machine that's just right for you today and will be flexible enough so it can adapt to your future needs as well.  [Update: End of summary.]

     

    So, have I signed up for one?  Well... no.  Novena is pretty far out of my equipment budget.  My AMD Zareason PC is fine, and if I were to replace it I would want a silent, small SBC with enough performance to browse those typically inefficient web sites.  If I want a Spartan 6 board, there are plenty of choices in the US$70-85 range.

  • in reply to johnbeetem

    Moore's law might change, not convinced the adverse effects will go away. Too much money tied up in driving the continual upgrade cycle.

    So even assuming Moore's law hits a wall and just stops, some other method of driving the cycle will be used instead.  Personally I think that needing a 64-core CPU just to render a web page means we've completely lost the plot image

  • in reply to johnbeetem

    I justed noticed that Adafruit posted a link to bunnie's EELive slides:

    http://bunniefoo.com/bunnie/eelive-keynote-2014.pdf

  • in reply to fustini

    Drew Fustini wrote:

     

    I justed noticed that Adafruit posted a link to bunnie's EELive slides:

    http://bunniefoo.com/bunnie/eelive-keynote-2014.pdf

    There's also an article about bunnie's keynote at Geek Times: As Moore's Law Slows, Open Hardware Rises | EE Times

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