Mark J. Foster Presents OLPC Technology

   
   
   
   
   

Do you follow One Laptop Per Child for the technology advances? Does the concept of 2x compression on the fly with a 512MB LPC NAND flash storage get you hot?

Might you know about the new 802.11G standard or that IEEE 802.11S mesh networking is in development? What about achieving a +3 dB gain by extending the wifi antennas on the top of a laptop? Then you might be a techno-geek.

But no matter if you don't know the difference between dual-core and dual-mode, you will love Mark J. Foster's presentation at Stanford EE Computer Systems Colloquium.


OLPC Laptop Physical Design

At the beginning of October, as the Vice President, Engineering and Chief Architect of One Laptop Per Child and a leading computer portables expert, Mr. Foster spoke in detail about the technology behind the laptop.

From core architecture like NAND Flash, to mechanical design shown here, to mesh wifi connectivity, he delves into every aspect of the $100 laptop CM1 2B1 XO Children's Machine in an informative and yet understandable manner.

In fact, his speech is the most articulate and comprehensive explanation of the One Laptop Per Child program yet given. He makes complicated technology like reflective monochrome and transmissive color dual-mode displays easy to grasp for non-techies, yet intriguing for techno-geeks too.

So if you have seventy-two minutes to spare for a serious OLPC education, its time for you to watch the video and download the slideshow.

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5 Comments

Sounds so cool, but the file won't open in VLC or Windows Media Player. Is the URL bad? Are there any other places it might be?

Justin: That's odd - it opens fine for me (although, Kenyan connection speeds prevent me actually watching it).

The .asx file is a Windows Media streaming format, so it should work just fine in WMP. As far as I recall, this video is not available in any other format, sorry, but keep your eyes peeled for a transcript - I know there is one, just not whether its online as yet.

(FWIW, I couldn't get VLC to open it either).

Justin,

The video link comes from this page: http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/ with the OLPC talk the second video listed currently.

Sorry it doesn't play for you, blame Microsoft bloatware.

The video plays just fine in Media Player Classic. Yay hax0rz!

Hi,

What is the antenna gain of XO LAPTOP?

Radio RF Wireless Chip will work at MAX capacity in the mesh network?

Tks,

Rodrigo

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