Openmoko strives for openness

Michael Shiloh michael at openmoko.org
Wed Mar 19 17:17:10 CET 2008


Hi everyone,

I wanted to point out to you something that has been happening quietly 
for awhile now.

Often discussions start on Openmoko internal mailing lists. Suddenly we 
realize the discussion is important and that there is no reason for it 
to remain internal.

There is a constant trend of moving these discussions from internal 
lists to public lists. Many Openmoko employees do this, but I'd 
particularly like to publicly thank Wolfgang Spraul for championing this 
and for setting up a culture that encourages everyone to think in these 
terms.

I realize that often you, the world outside, see these discussions 
appear on the external lists and perhaps don't realize that this is a 
deliberate action on our part to hold as much discussion as possible in 
public rather than private forums.

Regards,
Michael

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Post- GTA02
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 10:27:47 +0000
From: Andy Green <andy at openmoko.com>
To: openmoko-kernel at lists.openmoko.org <openmoko-kernel at lists.openmoko.org>

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Hi folks -

We had some internal talk about how to go post GTA02 and Wolfgang wants
us to make it external.

We have a choice about basing on S3C2443 or S3C6400.  A lot of the info
is confidential but not these high level things which are public domain
on Samsung's site.

S3C2443 is an 130nm incremental improvement over the 2442 in GTA02 with
480Mbps USB Device (not OTG) and better clock scaling.  It can accept
x16 DDR memory.

S3C6400 is 90nm and has 480Mbps USB2 OTG, 667MHz max clock, some 2D
acceleration and can accept x32 DDR memory.

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/productInfo.do?fmly_id=229&partnum=S3C6400
http://www.samsung.com/global/system/business/semiconductor/product/2007/8/21/661267ptb_s3c6400_rev15.pdf

I like the 6400 better but information is a bit scarce right now and it
can go either way.

Some other concepts kicked around:

  - Merge the debug board function on to the phone, perhaps with internal
micro USB used for debricking and hacking.  No write-once memory.

  - Discard U-Boot, minimal bootloader direct to kernel

  - Focus on SD Card rootfs rather than internal memory

  - Add a small lowpower MPU like TI MPS430 to manage everything
seamlessly when main CPU is down.  Stuff like motion sensors, wake
sources, battery management, maybe touchscreen, leds so there is an
always-on "guiding hand" in the phone that is consistent and reliable

To be clear though -- GTA02 is soon going to actually exist, and this is
just future talk right now.  But because of that, if you have any ideas
about future arch, now is the time to throw them in and they will at
least get the time of day.

- -Andy
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