Open Hardware GNU/Linux PPC64 Laptop Potential – Roberto Innocenti, Power Progress Community
Open Hardware GNU/Linux PPC64 Laptop Potential – Roberto Innocenti, Power Progress Community (not profit association)
Speakers: Roberto Innocenti
Around 6 years back, we started as a group of FOSS,PowerPC and Open Hardware enthusiasts, with beginning to work on PowerPC Notebook project which was designed around GNU/Linux using Open Hardware. We had very limited funding with limited skills to work. But our enthusiasm and motivation led us to reach fabrication stage for the motherboard. Finally this year we could successfully design its PCB with the help of collaborators and limited funding from donors. There were many challenges faced in this process. Since PowerPC processors have been around for more than 2 decades, but the current implementation on Notebook was difficult to take in the market. Coming to the performance in Big Endian mode is maximized in this with many software need to be patched. In future we plan to upgrade our PCB design to the more recent packaging technology for the processor. Also, with increasing collaborators, it would be possible to design more smaller and cheaper PowerPC board.
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