Novena - Open source computing platform

[emusan]

http://www.crowdsupply.com/kosagi/novena-open-laptop

 

Just stumbled across this today, and I'm blown away! This needs more attention!

 

Essentially it's a full-on laptop motherboard with an ARM SoC (so, no Windows or x86 applications, but this isn't intended for general consumer use) and a very high-end FPGA, along with some RAM, flash, and all the I/O you could ever want.

 

While there have been SoC/FPGA hybrids in the past (even Altera and Xilinx themselves are coming out with them), I've yet to see anything that has high-end components like this.

 

Why would you want an FPGA in your "open source" laptop? Well, they give bitcoin mining as one example, but I see it as potential for a lot more (open source video processing for one, even in a setup like this the video core still requires proprietary drivers). You could even program it with a secondary CPU to work on other tasks. If anyone has questions about the possiblities with this, feel free to ask, I do a bit of work with FPGA's for school (though I'm no expert).

 

They seem to be pretty far along in the process as well.

 

(This is my first time posting in the news section so if I'm doing anything wrong let me know)

[mr.squishy]

This sounds pretty cool, can you give some examples of possible applications?

[emusan]

This sounds pretty cool, can you give some examples of possible applications?

 

Well, I plan on getting one and using it as a portable PC, I use linux for almost everything so I don't really miss much going between Arm and x86. The processor on there should be good enough for most mobile computing needs.

 

As far as the FPGA goes, you could almost think of it as a reconfigurable PCI card (although that's simplifying it a fair bit). You could implement a sound card on it one day (assuming you have a DAC to hook up to it), then the next day program it to do some extra processing for your CPU (perhaps some raytracing). Right now I'm working on a function generator that runs on an FPGA for a junior project for school, and people have oscilloscope examples as well (these would both require a little bit of extra hardware, but I think it should be relatively easy to add these kinds of things through their high speed port for the fpga).

 

Something like this could be very easily modified to let you use the FPGA as a capture card, taking the strain off the CPU.

 

There are many more things you could do with it. However, I'm not entirely sure how they plan on allowing users to program the fpga, and it might require access to another computer and some know-how with FPGA tools, so it might not be exactly "plug-and-play". So, while it sounds neat, if you haven't used an FPGA before it might not be the best platform to start with. (then again they might have a good programming solution for it already, though they can be tricky, particularly when working on ARM).

[qwertywarrior]

GOD DAMN IT

they took my idea for an opensource hardware pc

 

i was thinking about the exact same thing a few months back

even the part where you would use the FPGA as a GPU

personally i would go with a combo a mali 400 with opensource drivers and a FPGA for real time cryptography acceleration

[emusan]

GOD DAMN IT

they took my idea for an opensource hardware pc

 

i was thinking about the exact same thing a few months back

even the part where you would use the FPGA as a GPU

personally i would go with a combo a mali 400 with opensource drivers and a FPGA for real time cryptography acceleration

 

The SoC does have a Vivante GC2000 GPU, which is OpenGLES 2.0 capable (and I think it's superior to the Mali 400). The only problem with it is that it requires a proprietary (non open-source) driver in order to make it work. That's why I think moving the graphics to the FPGA could be an interesting idea, as then you'd have a 100% open source computer (to some degree).

[qwertywarrior]

The SoC does have a Vivante GC2000 GPU, which is OpenGLES 2.0 capable (and I think it's superior to the Mali 400). The only problem with it is that it requires a proprietary (non open-source) driver in order to make it work. That's why I think moving the graphics to the FPGA could be an interesting idea, as then you'd have a 100% open source computer (to some degree).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_graphics_device_driver#Vivante

check this out open source drivers are available and better than the proprietary ones

 

it also looks like the vivante GPU is much more superior than  Mali 400

supports OpenCL !