Dynabook hw cost

Any HW hackers here? Has anyone computed what a Dynabook would cost?

First, I'm interested in understanding why true Dynabook hardware has
not been available. Is it just too costly? I think we can trace the
reasons why the software side of a Dynabook has not been fulfilled
(although, I trust that Viewpoints NSF grant will close this gap). I
thought that something more powerful and a bit bigger than the Nokia
N800 but smaller than today's typical small notebook would be available
by now. But I can't find one. I gotta believe that companies like
Toshiba have investigated this thoroughly. And, if so, they've come to
the conclusion that there is no business. Or if not, maybe by their
bureaucratic blindness they have totally missed this market.

Second, I'd like to understand what the cost of a Dynabook would
actually be in today's dollars.

I think a true Dynabook is long over due. Today's hardware doesn't
suffice. Either it's too underpowered, or too bloated. Too small, or too
heavy. (and all too expensive!)

Any thoughts about the specs of the Dynabook and why we are still
waiting? (hmm... is the XO is close?... wonder if parts will be available)

(I still have my Sony magic cap. It was a bit too underpowered and bit
too thick. and alas, no smalltalk)

--
brad fuller

Hi Brad--

> I think a true Dynabook is long over due. Today's hardware doesn't
> suffice. Either it's too underpowered, or too bloated. Too small, or
> too heavy. (and all too expensive!)

     What do you have in mind? How fast, how big, how heavy, how much?
Personally, I think something even as mundane as a Powerbook is
adequate; certainly more appealing than the old Dynabook mockups.


-C

--
Craig Latta
improvisational musical informaticist
www.netjam.org
Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]

On Tuesday 22 May 2007 11:42 am, Brad Fuller wrote:
> Any thoughts about the specs of the Dynabook and why we are still
> waiting? (hmm... is the XO is close?... wonder if parts will be available)
AFAIK, the driving factors for personal computing has always been battery
life, weight, networking and tight integration between hardware and operating
software (i.e. no superfluous components) in that order. It is frustrating to
see computing devices sold by megahertz, multi-core, RAM/HDD capacity, camera
megapixels and so on.

I think the word book in the name biases us to think of a screen built into
the machine. If we drop this assumption, then a Dynabook could just be a
small computer embedded in a foldable panel that opens out to a 84-key
keyboard and a small 2" preview OLED screen at the top and a resistive
touchpad at the bottom. A micro-projector would cast a screen upto 17". USB
slots along the edges take in flash memory cards for user-data. When a card
is plugged in, the machine starts up automatically and personalizes itself
based on files on card. When the card is ejected, the system shuts down.

Dreaming :-) .. Subbu

Craig Latta wrote:

Hi Brad--
  

I think a true Dynabook is long over due. Today's hardware doesn't
suffice. Either it's too underpowered, or too bloated. Too small, or
too heavy. (and all too expensive!)
    

     What do you have in mind? How fast, how big, how heavy, how much?
Personally, I think something even as mundane as a Powerbook is
adequate; certainly more appealing than the old Dynabook mockups.
  

My question was open-ended to allow others to describe what they feel would represent the best in dynabook  hw. Do you feel the Powerbook is only adequate? a good model, or the best out there right now?

I'm thinking not in terms of what it is, but rather how and in what context it
would be used:

* To be used ubiquitously in any context, it needs to not only be small and have
good battery life, but it needs to be cheap and "losable."  I think Alan gives
an example of taking it to the beach or a raft in the pool. (This also implies
replicated external storage.)

* I don't want to just execute prescribed tasks with it, I want to explore and
problem-solve (e.g., in the http://nakedobjects.org sense). This may be getting
beyond the scope of an electronic book, but I think this is consistent with the
general thrust of the dynabook and dynamic languages community. (You could maybe
argue that real books with pages are more exploratory/problem-solving than
scrolls.) In any case, my feeling (which I'm a relatively recent convert to) is
that the best way to do this is with direct manipulation (in both the language
sense like self, and the UI sense like the iPhone).

* The things I want to explore and manipulate include all media, for which I
want to both get existing media/communications (networked) and capture my own
(camera and microphone, possibly in stereo or higher degrees for 3D scanning).

I don't think the hardware -- or the software -- is quite there yet to
accomplish all this, but it's getting close. To the degree that one believes
that the dynabook hasn't really happened yet, I wonder if it is because we have
not yet satisfyingly achieved all the above simultaneously.

-H

subbukk wrote:

Howard Stearns wrote: This is consistent with what I understand the Dynabook to be: a dynamic
medium that molds to one's needs; a unique and personal extension of
one's work and play. And, this system should be able to be updated with
object enhancements authored by others. For instance, if a new video
playback medium is invented, the Dynabook should be able to
update/adapt. Squeak isn't quite there yet, today. It has problems just
moving objects from one version to another. (it can't even playback all
video and audio formats.) But, it's a solvable problem: maybe one area
to look at is not at the object, but at the message. Maybe the objects
are different on each personal machine in that they match they needs
locally (the user's modifications and the HW.) and the message is what
is unique across Dynabooks.

I also see the Dynabook interoperate with other Dynabooks and other
external objects. Not that a user pulls up a web browser and surfs, but
access external objects as if the objects are locally resident.  Today,
Rich Internet Applications (RIA) are a buzzword (those applications that
access the network for their own need w/o a browser) -- but this is
something Squeak has had fundamentally from early on and croquet has
developed further with islands. Again, not completely usable in Squeak
today, but solvable. Web data should be manipulated as any other object
inside the Dynabook.
Security is a concern that needs more research.

The idea of a projector is interesting in that removes real estate from
the product. But, it means the product is less personal and not be able
to be used outdoors. I like the idea of the XO's display and technology.
Maybe it's be a good candidate for the Dynabook display.

> I don't think the hardware -- or the software -- is quite there yet to
> accomplish all this, but it's getting close. To the degree that one
> believes that the dynabook hasn't really happened yet, I wonder if it
> is because we have not yet satisfyingly achieved all the above
> simultaneously.
I don't know. Not that the Dynabook will ever be in stone, I think a
version of the Dynabook can be pretty much thought out and planned
today. I think the hardware is there, or extremely close (1.8" HD are
reaching 100-120GB). I think the software is almost there (of course,
"almost" is relative!) What I see is that we are past the concept and
idea phase and the rest of the work is mostly sweat - with the
occasional, and needed, brilliant light bulbs along the way to encourage
new development ideas. Alan, Dan, Yoshiki, Andreas and Ian's paper is a
good example of this thought process. Now, I think it is a matter of scale.

I want one now, though ;-)

> My question was open-ended to allow others to describe what they feel
> would represent the best in dynabook hw.

     Ah, but you said the current stuff is unacceptable in various ways,
which to me says that you have some magnitudes in mind that *would* be
acceptable. I always like to know where the finish line is when someone
says we haven't reached it. (Usually it turns out that there isn't one,
people are just never satisifed. :)

> Do you feel the Powerbook is only adequate? a good model, or the best
> out there right now?

     Yes, I'd call it only adequate, but that's an important milestone
after all the painfully inadequate stuff we tortured ourselves with in
the past. :)  I'd also say it's the best thing going right now. The
improvements I'd make are enough battery life to operate full-out for a
person's entire waking day, a modular processor connection design that
allows use in other smaller and larger devices, and a multi-touch display.

     But this is above and beyond the "Dynabook" hardware vision, which
I think has effectively been met already. What's missing is the
software, and a culture that aspires to doing more than reading email.


-C

--
Craig Latta
improvisational musical informaticist
www.netjam.org
Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]

Craig Latta wrote:

My question was open-ended to allow others to describe what they feel
would represent the best in dynabook hw.
    

     Ah, but you said the current stuff is unacceptable in various ways,
which to me says that you have some magnitudes in mind that *would* be
acceptable. I always like to know where the finish line is when someone
says we haven't reached it. (Usually it turns out that there isn't one,
people are just never satisifed. :)
  

I should be more accurate here. What I mean is that I haven't seen an acceptable Dynabook. But, I do believe the hardware parts are available today to construct such a beast. (plus, I'm never satisfied...)

If you witness the battle between say OLPC and intel classmate I  
think the problem is the vendors just want to push out
yet another windows laptop.  Even Apple had to fight to convince  
people that laptops could come in other colors than Black.

I wonder if we would still be lugging about telephone book sized  
black laptops because that represents the less risky path.

On May 22, 2007, at 11:10 AM, Brad Fuller wrote:

--
========================================================================
===
John M. McIntosh <[hidden email]>
Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd.  http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com
========================================================================
===

On Tue, May 22, 2007 at 09:44:37AM -0500, Howard Stearns wrote:
> I'm thinking not in terms of what it is, but rather how and in what context
> it would be used:
>
> * To be used ubiquitously in any context, it needs to not only be small and
> have good battery life, but it needs to be cheap and "losable."  I think
> Alan gives an example of taking it to the beach or a raft in the pool.
> (This also implies replicated external storage.)

XO has all these features.

> * I don't want to just execute prescribed tasks with it, I want to explore
> and problem-solve (e.g., in the http://nakedobjects.org sense). This may be
> getting beyond the scope of an electronic book, but I think this is
> consistent with the general thrust of the dynabook and dynamic languages
> community. (You could maybe argue that real books with pages are more
> exploratory/problem-solving than scrolls.) In any case, my feeling (which
> I'm a relatively recent convert to) is that the best way to do this is with
> direct manipulation (in both the language sense like self, and the UI sense
> like the iPhone).

This area is the most lacking area of the Dynabook. Pepsi,
Slate, Magritte, Seaside, Enlightenment[1], Sugar[2],
eToys, Scratch, Tweak, and Croquet are all partial solutions to
the problem, but they are all quite separate so far. This list
is clearly Squeak-biased, as I don't keep up with other
projects. I don't understand what you mean by "the UI sense", so
I cannot comment.

> * The things I want to explore and manipulate include all media, for which
> I want to both get existing media/communications (networked) and capture my
> own (camera and microphone, possibly in stereo or higher degrees for 3D
> scanning).
>
> I don't think the hardware -- or the software -- is quite there yet to
> accomplish all this, but it's getting close. To the degree that one
> believes that the dynabook hasn't really happened yet, I wonder if it is
> because we have not yet satisfyingly achieved all the above simultaneously.

I think the hardware is ready, and OLPC does a great job of
uniting the hardware with secure AND extensible software. XO is
definitely the closest thing to the Dynabook that has yet been
created.

[1]: The Enlightenment Foundation Libraries are, in my opinion,
the only non-smalltalk graphic framework that can rival Morphic
and Tweak in the area of statically composable models, views,
and behavior. However, being C, it cannot really do post-load
composability. It allows composition all the way until
load-time.

[2]: Sugar, the XO default shell.

--
Matthew Fulmer -- http://mtfulmer.wordpress.com/
Help improve Squeak Documentation: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/808

Matthew Fulmer wrote:

On Tue, May 22, 2007 at 09:44:37AM -0500, Howard Stearns wrote:
  

I'm thinking not in terms of what it is, but rather how and in what context 
it would be used:

* To be used ubiquitously in any context, it needs to not only be small and 
have good battery life, but it needs to be cheap and "losable."  I think 
Alan gives an example of taking it to the beach or a raft in the pool. 
(This also implies replicated external storage.)
    

XO has all these features.
  

It does, but I think a Dynabook (or what we now are contemplating a Dynabook to be) would require a bit more processor and storage power (and a better design of the input methods - be it a QWERY keyboard, chord and/or touch-screen.) The Geode is a low-power processor, and that's great and what I think we want to head for. But I think a better balance could be made with another processor to address the needs of a broader user base - balancing software needs with power consumption.

I think also that memory is too low and storage should probably be in the 50GB range. I think also that some compromise in video/audio codec delivery should be made so that most of the multimedia recording/playback processing can be assisted by HW (motion compensation, bitblt, even H.264, etc.).

The Viewpoints "Steps Toward The Reinvention of Programming" (maybe I'll call the authors "The Gang of 5") does not go into detail on what their "metal" consists of. I'd like to find out more of what they are thinking. Maybe they'll start with a powerbook and use the XO in parallel. Maybe they have some ideas of building a new platform in parallel with the software development.

Along those lines, is there any contemporary non-Von Neuman processor architecture that would be better suited for Smalltalk? Perhaps to reduce power and to streamline OO architectures. I remember reading Dan and Alan mentioning the handy use of microcoding processors at Xerox to help their work. I also recall a processor that was built for OO but I can't find my notes. Anyone?

===
General XO specs:

CPU

AMD Geode 400 MHz x86

Memory

128 Mb 133 MHz DRAM

BIOS

LinuxBIOS stored on 512k flash ROM

Storage

512 Mb SLC NAND Flash memory

Video

693 x 520 pixel color display capable of switching to a 1200 by 900 sunlight-readable monochrome mode

Network

internal 802.11 wi-fi with mesh networking capability

Keyboard

various depending on target language. They will include two 5-key cursor-control pads.

Mouse

a touchpad pointing device

Interfaces

4 USB ports

Power

input jack for DC from 10 up to 25 volts. A human-powered generator, probably foot powered, will be bundled with the unit. The internal rechargable battery has 5 NiMH cells.

Sound

built-in stereo speakers and microphone

For the fun of being a devil's advocate, I'll suggest here that current (or near-future) technology has already leap frogged over the physical definition of the need for a Dynabook.

It's really all about convenience to the human person for the task at hand, both physical convenience and mental convenience. So, these two observations suggest to me what we're really headed for.

1. Clearly, mentally, we now desire to search, view, organize, and manipulate much more information than can be stored in a Dynabook in any using any current or anticipated portable storage technology and to access that volume of data more quickly than can be transfered to any portable Dynabook. So, in many ways, interconnected, online, hosted, data and processes are more interesting and convenient for time and space than most things a Dynabook can manipulate in isolation.
2. As shown by the fact that monocles have turned into glasses and, in turn, into contact lenses, pocket watches to wrist watches, desk phones to portable phones to cell phones to bluetooth ear pieces, and pens to touch screens to motion sensors (manipulating your own digits while they're close to you) ... it's more convenient for a device to hold on to you than for you to manually hold on to it.

Therefore, I suspect that future screens will be those devices that point low power lasers into your eye and track head and eye motion giving you a virtually infinite view-screen in size, depth, and detail ... in 3D ... wearable ... hands-free. Maybe not sociably acceptable now, but needs override social tastes over time. The audio will include a little voice, like your conscience, overlaid on whatever you're listening to. The book part won't be something you hold, but worn devices which input your voice for situations where that's convenient, input your hand/finger gestures where that's convenient, and your subvocalization where that's convenient, and hide themselves in physically social situations.

Now if only I could invent a device that could make me look like I'm interested and listening to when I'm not while someone is speaking directly to me ... and recording was being said for later reference and prompting me to say the appropriate "uh-huh" at the appropriate places.... I could make a fortune selling that one :^)     (to married men).

The syllable "book" suggests a codex, which has been a convenient, familiar, and dense medium of transporting, preserving, organizing, and sharing information. But, new mediums tend to adapt the the resources available so the codex form (morph) itself may be prosaic now.

Also, "dyna"  means power in Greek so a "Dynabook" is a "power-book" by definition. ;-)

Cheers,
Darius

OK, before you ask me "What little voice?"...

It's the little voice you hear saying "What little voice?"

Can you hear it now?

Cheers,
Darius

Also, manufacturing such a device would use a lot less natural resources than a Dynabook would for both the display and the battery. 

And it's harder to "lose" when you're wearing it. And harder for personal data to be stolen from your person or learned by "shoulder surfers"  but can be easily shared virtually with anyone near or far. Like Murray suggests in "Hamlet on the Holodeck - the Future of Narrative in Cyberspace" we'll be living "in" our data soon, either constructing organized knowledge, or playing at destroying organized knowledge.

Personally constructed data/processes can also be more redundant, accessible, shareable and take advantage of the economy of scale and the economy of repurposing unused resources when hosted, so long as you trust your hosts.

Cheers,
Darius

On Tue, May 22, 2007 at 03:29:52PM -0700, Brad Fuller wrote:
>    Along those lines, is there any contemporary non-Von Neuman processor
>    architecture that would be better suited for Smalltalk? Perhaps to reduce
>    power and to streamline OO architectures. I remember reading Dan and Alan
>    mentioning the handy use of microcoding processors at Xerox to help their
>    work. I also recall a processor that was built for OO but I can't find my
>    notes. Anyone?

Jecel is the local expert in processors. You should check out
his site:
http://www.merlintec.com:8080/hardware

He and I will probably be working collaboratively on
implementing one of those designs (we are both starting a
Master's degree at the same time, and we are planning to work
together on the same project)

Nothing official yet, but it is something to look forward to.

--
Matthew Fulmer -- http://mtfulmer.wordpress.com/
Help improve Squeak Documentation: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/808

On 22-May-07, at 8:26 PM, Matthew Fulmer wrote:

>
> Jecel is the local expert in processors. You should check out
> his site:
> http://www.merlintec.com:8080/hardware

I still think a very simple RISC architecture with a substantial  
above-the-bus chunk of memory that can be used for 'microcode' or  
data store, no traditional (and expensive) cache, transputer-like  
communication channels to other cores and probably no special  
floating point hardware would be nice. If you can get to a state  
where dozens/hundreds of cores can be sensibly used then one or two  
can spend their time as floating point units and if needed many more  
can join in. Likewise for video stream processing.

The really hard part is getting people to actually think about multi-
processing solutions to problems. The software world is far too  
comfortable with single-thread thinking and the cosy fantasy version  
of Moore's Law.


tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Strange Opcodes: ZZZZZZZZZZZZ: enter sleep mode

"Darius Clarke" <[hidden email]> writes:
>    1. Clearly, mentally, we now desire to search, view, organize, and
>    manipulate much more information than can be stored in a Dynabook in any
>    using any current or anticipated portable storage technology and to access
>    that volume of data more quickly than can be transfered to any portable
>    Dynabook. So, in many ways, interconnected, online, hosted, data and
>    processes are more interesting and convenient for time and space than most
>    things a Dynabook can manipulate in isolation.

Networking is important, but I'd put it on a different reason.  Raw
storage capacity of portables is astronomical.  It is routine nowadays
to store full-length movies on a laptop.

Networking remains important, though, for communication.  It's very
powerful to be able to check on wikipedia whenever a question comes to
your mind.  It's really useful to be able to download new software on
demand as the need arises.  And gee, a lot of what people do with
their fancy personal computers, anyway, is sit around and talk chat
groups and post on message boards


Lex

On Wednesday 23 May 2007 10:46 am, tim Rowledge wrote:
> The really hard part is getting people to actually think about multi-
> processing solutions to problems....
On the contrary, it is much simpler to write and reason about programs if
multiprocessing capability is given.   Dijkstra's do-od structure was
inherently multi. But building machines to 'execute' such programs was hard,
so system designers invented languages that forced programmers to code for
efficiency rather than simplicity. This trend was beautifully captured by
Gerald Weinberg in his story of Levine the Genius Tailor:

  http://www.zafar.se/bkz/Articles/GeniusLanguageDesigner

Regards .. Subbu

On Tue, May 22, 2007 at 03:29:52PM -0700, Brad Fuller wrote:
>    Along those lines, is there any contemporary non-Von Neuman processor
>    architecture that would be better suited for Smalltalk? Perhaps to reduce
>    power and to streamline OO architectures. I remember reading Dan and Alan
>    mentioning the handy use of microcoding processors at Xerox to help their
>    work. I also recall a processor that was built for OO but I can't find my
>    notes. Anyone?

Then Matthew Fulmer wrote:
> Jecel is the local expert in processors. You should check out
> his site:
> http://www.merlintec.com:8080/hardware
>
> He and I will probably be working collaboratively on
> implementing one of those designs (we are both starting a
> Master's degree at the same time, and we are planning to work
> together on the same project)

        This is anecdotal (I wasn't involved), and because I
wasn't involved, my memory is doubly foggy, BUT: Dave Patterson
at Berkeley ran a project for several years called SOAR: Smalltalk
On A RISC.  For openers, he ported Smalltalk to the VAX under
Berkeley UNIX by writing his own VM out of the Blue Book and
running a Xerox image on it.  He did this in order to instrument
the VM so he could figure out how to help it along in hardware.
Then he ported it to Suns when they came along, using SunView.

        I was working at Rand and we had a Smalltalk license, so
I grabbed the code and put it up on an early Sun.  Doing so
taught me a valuable lesson on the dangers of too much error
recovery in code (ask me about this one: it's a pip!), but gave
me a very nice Smalltalk on a UNIX.

        Dave built the SOAR, and to his surprise found that very
little of the additional hardware he contemplated did very much
good:  Smalltalk ran about as well on a regular RISC as it did on
his "optimized" hardware, at least in emulation.  So the SOAR chip
he and his students ended up building was a simple RISC with,
perhaps, one additional tag bit to help with garbage collection, or
something like that.

        Years later, Sun came by and said, "We're sick to death
of the 68000 architecture.  We need a RISC.  Got anything handy?"

        "Well," says Dave, "It just so happens..."  ...and pulled
the masks for the SOAR off the shelf.

        This turned into the SPARC architecture.

        So, if you ever wondered why ParcPlace/Objectworks Smalltalk,
and other Smalltalks that do JIT compiling of methods into native
code, do so well on SPARC machines, now you know.

Mike O'Brien

P.S.  I take no responsibility for the truth of any of this, but
this is my recollection.

On
> This is anecdotal (I wasn't involved), and because I
> wasn't involved, my memory is doubly foggy, BUT: Dave Patterson

That would be Dave Ungar :-)
>
> So, if you ever wondered why ParcPlace/Objectworks Smalltalk,
> and other Smalltalks that do JIT compiling of methods into native
> code, do so well on SPARC machines, now you know.

Oddly enough none of the sparc tag stuff turned out to help us with  
that particular code generator; and the register windows stuff caused  
so much hassle I think it was ignored as much as possible. It's so  
long ago now I can barely even recall any details. I do remember a  
chip step that changed the cache clearing instruction from closed  
interval to semi-closed so that we had a terrifyingly tricky to debug  
case where just occasionally the i-cache flush (after generating  
machine code for a method) didn't flush out the last word any more  
and so the generated code was wrong *on reload*. I think several  
weeks of brain-banging resulted.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Useful random insult:- One flower short of an arrangement.