In the Opening Keynote Session of Freescale FTF 2008, a guest from THTF (see also the LimePC thread) appeared on stage, and showed off their laptop based on the Freescale MPC5121e processor:



The MPC5121e is a sequel CPU to the MPC5200 used in the Efika.

The laptop offers similar specs as the LimePC products (i.e. USB2, SATA, WiFi, Bluetooth, standard 10/100 ethernet, etc).

Due to the low heat characteristics (no heat sinks required on top of the CPU), compactness and high level of integration of peripheral controllers, the laptop can be made very thin. According to the THTF representative, what sets the thickness of the laptop is really the height of the backside connectors.

Due to the low power consumption of the 5121e and the rather small screen size, my guess is that battery operation time should be quite impressive.

And the best of all, the Bill of Materials for this laptop is *below $100*!

If those are 7" screens, then they are abit bigger than the EeePC.

Didn't they say anything else about them? Availability?

Well, if its just linux then - -

But if its Morph OS then - -

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Yes, it's a 7" screen...

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Well nothing technical that we don't know already from the 5121e specs and the specs from those other LimePC products. The laptop is "ultra light weight", and it's obviously *very* cheap to produce.



These are obviously prototypes just like the previously seen LimePC products. There was this "we can produce this in many ways" nuance in the speech - "we could make it very thin, the only limiting thing is the connectors", and there were also this talk about making products for OEM's according to their needs and wants. Nothing was said about availability other than "we will have products out later this year", and I guess we will have to wait and see which one of the LimePC concepts will come to market first, but I guess that could partly depend on how fast Freescale can get the revised 5121e model into production (maybe it's already here?)...

@wolfe

I see great potential for MorphOS on *all* those LimePC concepts, don't you?

Another detail about all this is:



The guy to the left is from THTF. The guy to the right is Rich Beyer, the *Freescale CEO*! The fact that the Freescale CEO is presenting this on main stage at the FTF2008 USA event is interesting by itself IMHO. Previously if you went to Freescale's website, you'd see LimePC banners all over the place. I think these are public signs of support and commitment. I think there may be a significant force behind this, some "mass in motion".

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Does anyone here know the involvement of Genesi in this development?

"The fact that the Freescale CEO is presenting this on main stage
at the FTF2008 USA event is interesting by itself IMHO"

Well.. I'm not surprised. Freescale seems to be having some
pretty hard times at the moment. No wonder, considering the
crash in the car industry.. Of course they endorse anything
that could lead to income for them. They are not blind -- they
have seen the one million EeePC's sold in 5 months!

[ Edited by ironfist on 2008/6/20 18:39 ]

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Yes I do, but when? This hardware is nothing for me without MOS, OS4 or maybe AROS but AROS is a ways off from being usable. Linux stinks . . .

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Desperate final attempt before the ship sinks?

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I was/am offered a job at Freescale for being part of the team that builds up the automotive software devision. Having examined the automotive business for the last four years and currently being in an automotive project does not really encourage me to switch.

Ugly, ugly, ugly... oh boy, had I just said they're ugly!?

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That's your own personal taste, nothing more nothing less. Personally I don't think it's ugly at all. In my eyes, this one looks way better than the "One Laptop Per Child". And more important than your personal views of aesthetics, it has some interesting specs! Like the (for instance) EeePC 700 it has a 7" screen, but AFAIK it has a real keyboard. It's most certainly a lot cheaper to produce than the EeePC, and it will kick some serious butt when it comes to battery time. And best of all, it can potentially run MorphOS natively, and this faster than the current Efika's! So I actually think your "rolling-eye" smiley is a bit out of place here, and totally uncalled for. This is what many people have been asking for since the advent of the Efika (and in most discussions about the 5121e as well for that matter), and judged by the live FTF presentation on stage a few days ago, this dream can actually come true! Personally, I would buy it the same day it was released! Especially with MorphOS!

Nice, but unless MorphOS Team is given a couple of these laptops it won't be much interesting... linux sucks

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Well, this time it's easier than ever! These MPC5121e based computers are going to be much cheaper than an Efika!
If MorphOS Team was able to do a quick port to an old, obscure PowerMac, go figure how little it's going to take for them to port MorphOS 2.0 to something much closer to a computer where MorphOS already runs. As soon as they are interested, of course.
Let's see if these THTF machines get to market, and how easily they can be hacked. Even if they don't run Genesi's SmartFirmware/Aura, I believe that MorphOS is not very much dependent on it (take the PowerMac examplle).

It can be done! Even Spain has passed to semifinals in the Euroleague

@Crumb

I'm pretty convinced that MorphOS will run on the MPC5121e/MPC5123 eventually, and when it does, it will automatically run on the laptop, the ThinPC, the UMPC, the HandheldPC, the PalmPC and the HDTV concepts. They are all essentially the same thing, in different packages. Potentially we will have a complete palette of mass produced, end-user products (pretty much *everything* except a desktop class stationary computer or a desktop class laptop).

This will be the Mass Market (click) that Genesi asks for suggestions for ("If you have some thoughts on how we might best restore Amiga-like OS environments to the mass market...").

But of course, the first step will be to have MorphOS 2.0 released at all. We have now entered the final week of the announced "Q2" period...

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The only known retail price estimations for the Lime series of products I'm aware of are quite old now, and we know at least a few parameters in most of their specs that has changed since then. I think these kind of things are moving targets, and even after the first release of products prices won't remain fixed, and on top of that, they could vary a lot on different local markets (so citing those (possibly completely erroneous) quotes at this time would be pointless and generally a bad thing to do, we all just have to wait and see!).

But I seriously wonder how you could possibly come to a conclusion that they will be much cheaper than the Efika? That's not what I have seen (even if the numbers are old and may be inaccurate by now).

They will all offer more (important!) features than the Efika, and a notably higher performance. They will come as complete products, with OS, applications, casings, power supply units, and built-in screens/touchscreens (where applicable), and (like Cherrypal) possibly with various degrees of attached services (depending on the business model of the OEM).

You will have to separate any references to "Bill of Materials" or any price quotes on the CPU's alone you may have read here and on other sites, from *the retail prices*. They are totally different numbers, and the latter will include (among lots of other things) R&D costs, license costs, and profit margins for everyone involved.

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"Hacked"?!?



You almost sound like the only way MorphOS would run on these devices would be if someone sneaked it into them by brute force? Maybe you should avoid OS4 related websites for a while?

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Frankly, that would make me *very* suprised!


[ Edited by takemehomegrandma on 2008/6/23 12:49 ]

> a quick port to an old, obscure PowerMac

Neither PowerMac nor PPC-MacMini (which you really meant) are what i'd call obscure.

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Dead easy: Manufactured by THTF in China, in the tens of thousands. Compare that to manufacture by bPlan in Germany in the hundreds...

The MPC5121e laptops showed at FTF were announced as having a bill of materials ("BOM") of less than a hundred dollars. And they have expensive keyboards and screens. Go figure how much the actual computer costs, without these "accesories"...
We should be jumping up and down in enjoyment, seriously. But all these years of frustration have made this small group of survivors very cautious. Which is only good. Genesi would like to see a lot more enthusiasm from our part, but that's not easy: Even if we all started jumping up'n'down in glee at the same time, we are just a drop in the ocean.

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This is very important: These are not bPlan/Genesi products, and that's a first for us all.
I asked previously to what extent is Genesi involved in these products, and had no answer. I guess the ansker is not easy.
From my point of view, this is an entirely new approach for us: MorphOS at least has infinite new hardware for deployment - well, that makes painfully evident that the ball is in our court. But this new sittuation can only be good. Aside from the new integrated display unit ("DIU"), the rest of this new computer should be very similar to the already mastered Efika 5200B. Genesi has said that they have the docs for the PowerVR unit. It's a very nice computer to run on, and it looks like an easy bet. At last. But, most of all, being regular products, these new computers should be very easy to get, not depending on a single small manufacturer like bPlan/Genesi, and that's a revolution in our little world.
I guess some pizza junkie developers are smiling.

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Good point. But really, do you think that, if these products were to be sold for $300, they would have any success? They are going to be cheaper, perhaps, very aggresively priced. It's a new range that needs market penetration. The only way to do it is using suicide prices.

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Yes. Of course, if would be nicer if Genesi (which is not the owner of the product) provided help, and it all looks as that's the scenario that Genesi wants. But, perhaps (and I could be wrong, of course), Genesi's assistance is not needed in order to port MorphOS to this new platform. What's more interesting is that there is at least one case of MorphOS being ported to an alien platform (the PowerMac) without any help. Just like people pushing Linux into a Nintendo console. They've made it.

Think about it again, Genesi is not the hardware manufacturer, for the first time. It's just another THTF customer that wants to enter the game.

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Wrong.

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Well, there hasn't been any evidence of that. I've yet have to see one of these new computers running Genesi's firmware.
Remember, companies change roadmaps.
And this one looks good. Things are going to be fun when the world is swamped by these nice little PowerPC thingies!

@ takemehomegrandma

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How could you possibly know that? At a BOM of less than $100, I think it is realistic to assume that it will not make use of the best batteries money can buy.

A modern dual-core laptop can run for about 4 hours on battery power when you are doing "light tasks" (i.e. the type of tasks that could also barely be done on an Asus EEE, OLPC, etc.).

The OLPC also runs roughly 4 hours on battery power when you are using it not just as an ebook but for "light" productivity despite the fact that it uses a smaller low-power display, a much slower processor, etc. Of course, 4 hours is still perfectly adequate given the low price of the device. Accordingly, one should not expect anything better than "adequate" for the THTF product either...

@jcmarcos

I think you will eventually find out:

1) that while production costs alone can determine *the lowest* possible retail price, it never determines *the highest* possible retail price. The gap in between the production cost and the retail price is what corporations live on. Chinese ones too! The bigger the better!

2) that corporations generally wants to a) Maximize profits, and b) sell high volumes. But in that order, not the other way around. The general way to increase volume is to lower the price, but after a certain break point, increasing volume this way happens at the cost of lower profit. Only in certain cases there may be a strategic reason to do this (like Microsoft and Sony selling games consoles at minimum profit or even at loss in order to get as big market share as possible for their licensed games), but I don't see how this will be the case here.

3) that most of the lime series of products *will* retail at a price tag of $300 or higher, and they will be successful nevertheless!

4) that while price competition is the easiest way to compete, it is also the most dangerous and *destructive* way. "Suicide prices" leads to suicide, it's as simple as that. There are much better ways to compete, ways that don't jeopardize profit and long term financial strength.

5) that you by running around suggesting to people that these devices will cost *much less* than the Efika, will cause a) unsold Efikas at Amiga dealer's stock because people will wait for something better and cheaper (in reality it may be better but hardly cheaper, and their relevance in a MorphOS context is unconfirmed), and b) create disappointment when people realizes that the lime devices simply never was any cheaper than the Efika (which they won't be).

6) that the 5121e/5123 are *not* the same chips as the 5200b even though they both have an e300 core (probably the only similarity on a low level), the differences are extensive, and the new chips presents a complete new set of challenges for an OS developer.

7) that Genesi is more involved in the Lime development venture than you obviously seem to think, far more than being "just another THTF customer that wants to enter the game."

8) that there are more ties between Genesi and MorphOS than you obviously seem to think.

9) that if MorphOS will ever run on these 5121e devices (which I hope), it won't happen through a reverse-engineering hack, but in a clean and official way.

10) that the video showing MorphOS booting on a mac is of a *mac mini* and not a powermac!

> I asked previously to what extent is Genesi involved in
> these products, and had no answer. I guess the ansker is
> not easy.

http://bbrv.blogspot.com/2008/01/read-all-about-it.html

> MorphOS being ported to an alien platform (the PowerMac)

Again: Please refrain from calling the MacMini "PowerMac". The PowerMac is/was another series of devices. If you want to refer to the hypernym then please call it PowerPC Mac or similar.

> It's just another THTF customer that wants to enter the
> game.

I don't think that Genesi is a THTF costumer, at least not in the way Cherrypal is.
"Genesi is managing the technology side-of-things for Cherrypal and THTF" (whatever that means).

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Yes, you are of course right in everything you say there.

For a real production run, the most logical would be for them to aim for a certain "good enough" operating time and purchase batteries accordingly. This is especially relevant if you aim for a BOM below $100 (like stepping down in screen size from 10.6" to 7" screen BTW), and 4 hours is a bit of a "standard" these days...

However, we *might* see different configurations, especially if various OEM's enters the picture. Battery time *could* be a competing spec (although it's kind of hard to imagine the need of battery times beyond, say, 8 hours even if technically possible. Who would *really* need that?), low/mid capacity SSD's instead of HDD's (like the Cherrypal), etc...

Batteries are still very costly. The EeePC runs 3 hours with a 7" screen.

The battery is a simple 4-cell battery (IIRC). It's a way to keep
the costs down, and I would bet that the CherryPal's will be
running a battery equal to that. As long as they want to keep
the costs down.

Their laptop competes directly with the one million EeePC's
already sold (and can be bought in every home-electronics
and computer store). To compete with this platform they need
to keep the costs down.

I can't see how they would ship the CherryPal with a better
battery than the EeePC. At least not in their early revisions.

ironfist: the laptop is not cherrypal's. its thtf's as the topic's title tells. cherrypal's device is an efika-like limepc rebranded.