7 ms·

I think a bigger issue is patents. Designing a decent CPUs without violating any patents is easy. Almost all CPUs today follow design patterns which were estab

by phire 8y ago

I think a bigger issue is patents. Designing a decent CPUs without violating any patents is easy. Almost all CPUs today follow design patterns which were established back in the mid 80s and early 90s. All those original patents have now expired and you can sidestep around the newer ones. Things like GPUs have evolved massively since the late 90s, gaining support for pixel shaders, vertex shaders, moving to unified core designs, gpu compute and establishing new threading models. And all these things have bled back into the Graphics standards. It would be really hard to design a gpu implementing even a 10 year old standard like OpenGL ES 2.0 without violating any patents. And it will be even worse with things like pci-e, ddr and networking controllers. You can't design around the patents without breaking compatibility because there are standards enforcing you to follow the patents.

dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
> You can't design around the patents without breaking compatibility because there are standards enforcing you to follow the patents. We could finally learn from this lesson and not support in any way any standards whose implementations require patent licensing.
madez 8y ago
We do not have to follow the standards that prevent open source solutions. If the price for having an open source computer is old technology or "nonstandard" solutions, then I'm more than happy to pay it.
- sicelo 8y ago
  +1
mjevans 8y ago
An extremely basic (but power efficient) framebuffer would probably be enough. At least with that and some less encumbered output stack (maybe display port?) real and secure foundations could be made for truly verifiable voting assistance systems. It should produce a voter readable paper ballot that is the /actual/ poll and include a 'quick count estimate' for the next morning reports.
- lkcl 8y ago
  https://github.com/RoaLogic/vga_lcd https://github.com/RoaLogic/vga_lcd richard herveille created one 16 years ago which can do the job. it's silicon-proven: ICubeCorp put it into their IC3128.
- Doxin 8y ago
  So this theoretical voting machine, how does it differ from an expensive pencil combined with a scantron-style form?
exikyut 8y ago
Okay, so let's just get on with starting at an incredibly basic level then! Consider the Ericsson MC218 / Psion Series 5 (https://www.google.com/search?q=psion+series+5 https://www.google.com/search?q=psion+series+5). The software (EPOC, forerunner to Symbian) could drag windows (whole windows) around the little screen faster than the LCD crystals could keep up/redraw. I had a look inside the unit (find the photos at https://www.applefritter.com/content/pocketable-ultra-low-powered-device-linux-andor-wi-fi https://www.applefritter.com/content/pocketable-ultra-low-po...) and found only a 36MHz ARM7TDMI inside. Presumably the CPU was doing the window redrawing all in software. It's really reassuring to me that such a slow CPU gave the LCD a run fo its money, because let's face it, doing $tons_of_pixel_manipulations on a CPU always chews power, so if you want battery life you're going to need something that works well at the low-power end of the spectrum. (The Series 5's monochrome LCD was 640x240.) So, well-designed software would meet the power consumption-versus-feature challenge halfway. Such software doesn't exist yet though, and it appears this status quo isn't going to change anytime soon; the (financial) investment required just doesn't seem to be materializing. I'd say the main problem is market effects, and consumer interest. "Yeah 70% of CPU time goes to drawing the screen" is NOT particularly attractive.
- lkcl 8y ago
  usually in these cases where the CPU is so slow, it simply doesn't have the bus bandwidth even to feed an LCD. so the LCD is an SPI device or 8080 MCU compatible memory-mapped peripheral, that has its own internal SRAM as a framebuffer. a good example is the HX8357D (now obsolete sadly) https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/video/backlight/hx8357.c https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/video/... technically speaking it's perfectly possible to use an 8mhz 8-bit arduino-style processor to make a phone, if all you want is calls and SMS! the processor inside the actual GSM/3G modem is far, far more powerful than that. i added up the number of actual processors in a smartphone once: it was insane. DSP in the Audio IC. ARM core in the GPS. ARM core in the 3G Modem. ARM core in the main processor. 8051 core in the capacitive touchpanel controller. the list just goes on and on!
  - exikyut 8y ago
3pt14159 8y ago
We could just license the patents though, right? They have to license them for a fair price by law, so I don't see how this stops an open source computer. It's not like we're getting the gold wafers for free.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
  > They have to license them for a fair price by law What law would that be? A patent holder can set whatever terms they want. Standards orgs try to impose FRAND for their contributors but it is not legally binding.
  - 3pt14159 8y ago
    It's what my patent lawyer explained to me, but I may have misunderstood him. The impression he gave me was that if someone patented something super useful they couldn't simply ask for a trillion dollars to stop their competitors from using it.

by phire 8y ago

dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago

> You can't design around the patents without breaking compatibility because there are standards enforcing you to follow the patents. We could finally learn from this lesson and not support in any way any standards whose implementations require patent licensing.

madez 8y ago

We do not have to follow the standards that prevent open source solutions. If the price for having an open source computer is old technology or "nonstandard" solutions, then I'm more than happy to pay it.

sicelo 8y ago
+1

mjevans 8y ago

An extremely basic (but power efficient) framebuffer would probably be enough. At least with that and some less encumbered output stack (maybe display port?) real and secure foundations could be made for truly verifiable voting assistance systems. It should produce a voter readable paper ballot that is the /actual/ poll and include a 'quick count estimate' for the next morning reports.

lkcl 8y ago
https://github.com/RoaLogic/vga_lcd https://github.com/RoaLogic/vga_lcd richard herveille created one 16 years ago which can do the job. it's silicon-proven: ICubeCorp put it into their IC3128.
Doxin 8y ago
So this theoretical voting machine, how does it differ from an expensive pencil combined with a scantron-style form?

exikyut 8y ago

Okay, so let's just get on with starting at an incredibly basic level then! Consider the Ericsson MC218 / Psion Series 5 (https://www.google.com/search?q=psion+series+5 https://www.google.com/search?q=psion+series+5). The software (EPOC, forerunner to Symbian) could drag windows (whole windows) around the little screen faster than the LCD crystals could keep up/redraw. I had a look inside the unit (find the photos at https://www.applefritter.com/content/pocketable-ultra-low-powered-device-linux-andor-wi-fi https://www.applefritter.com/content/pocketable-ultra-low-po...) and found only a 36MHz ARM7TDMI inside. Presumably the CPU was doing the window redrawing all in software. It's really reassuring to me that such a slow CPU gave the LCD a run fo its money, because let's face it, doing $tons_of_pixel_manipulations on a CPU always chews power, so if you want battery life you're going to need something that works well at the low-power end of the spectrum. (The Series 5's monochrome LCD was 640x240.) So, well-designed software would meet the power consumption-versus-feature challenge halfway. Such software doesn't exist yet though, and it appears this status quo isn't going to change anytime soon; the (financial) investment required just doesn't seem to be materializing. I'd say the main problem is market effects, and consumer interest. "Yeah 70% of CPU time goes to drawing the screen" is NOT particularly attractive.

lkcl 8y ago
usually in these cases where the CPU is so slow, it simply doesn't have the bus bandwidth even to feed an LCD. so the LCD is an SPI device or 8080 MCU compatible memory-mapped peripheral, that has its own internal SRAM as a framebuffer. a good example is the HX8357D (now obsolete sadly) https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/video/backlight/hx8357.c https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/video/... technically speaking it's perfectly possible to use an 8mhz 8-bit arduino-style processor to make a phone, if all you want is calls and SMS! the processor inside the actual GSM/3G modem is far, far more powerful than that. i added up the number of actual processors in a smartphone once: it was insane. DSP in the Audio IC. ARM core in the GPS. ARM core in the 3G Modem. ARM core in the main processor. 8051 core in the capacitive touchpanel controller. the list just goes on and on!
- exikyut 8y ago

3pt14159 8y ago

We could just license the patents though, right? They have to license them for a fair price by law, so I don't see how this stops an open source computer. It's not like we're getting the gold wafers for free.

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
> They have to license them for a fair price by law What law would that be? A patent holder can set whatever terms they want. Standards orgs try to impose FRAND for their contributors but it is not legally binding.
- 3pt14159 8y ago
  It's what my patent lawyer explained to me, but I may have misunderstood him. The impression he gave me was that if someone patented something super useful they couldn't simply ask for a trillion dollars to stop their competitors from using it.