Petrified Wood

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.

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

R&B

There is No Substitute for Great People

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!

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

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

The Race is...

...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!

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

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power2people Take Two

...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.

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

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Target Growth

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.

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

R&B

PowerDev Meeting #2

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!

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

R&B

New Wine New Wineskins

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).

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

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Go for Gold!

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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PowerDev Meeting #1

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.

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

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PowerDeveloper Projects

The ColdFire, MPC8610 and MPC5121E Projects are now open.

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

R&B