One Laptop Per Child

One Laptop Per Child aims to provide a means for learning, self-expression and exploration to the nearly two billion children of the developing world with little or no access to education.

Starting November 12, One Laptop Per Child will be offering a Give 1 Get 1 Program for a brief window of time in North America.
For $399, you will be purchasing two XO laptops—one that will be sent to empower a child to learn in a developing nation, and one that will be sent to your child at home.
The XO laptop is a full-time wireless router. Children in the most remote regions of the globe—as well as their teachers and families—will be connected both to one another and to the Internet.

It features a 7.5 inch, 1200×900 pixel, TFT screen and self-refreshing display with higher resolution (200 DPI) than 95 percent of the laptops on the market today. Two display modes are available: a transmissive, full-color mode, and a reflective, high-resolution mode that is sunlight readable. Both consume very little power: the transmissive mode consumes one watt—about one seventh of the average LCD power consumption in a laptop; the reflective mode consumes a miserly 0.2 watts.

The laptop selectively suspends operation of its CPU, which makes possible even more remarkable power savings. The laptop nominally consumes less than two watts—less than one tenth of what a standard laptop consumes—so little that XO can be recharged by human power. This is a critical advance for the half-billion children who have no access to electricity.

Hardware

Physical dimensions:

* Approximate dimensions: 242mm×228mm×32mm;
* Approximate weight: 1.45KG with LiFeP battery; 1.58KG with NiMH battery;
* Configuration: Convertible laptop with pivoting, reversible display; dirt- and moisture-resistant system enclosure; no fan.

Core electronics:

* CPU: x86-compatible processor with 64KB each L1 I and D cache; at least 128KB L2 cache; AMD Geode LX-700@0.8W (datasheet);
* CPU clock speed: 433 Mhz;
* ISA compatibility: Support for both the MMX and 3DNow! x86 instruction-set extensions; Athlon instruction set (including MMX and 3DNow! Enhanced) with additional Geode-specific instructions;
* Companion chips: PCI and memory interface integrated with CPU; North Bridge: PCI and Memory Interface integrated with Geode CPU; AMD CS5536 South Bridge (datasheet);
* Graphics controller: Integrated with Geode CPU; unified memory architecture;
* Embedded controller: ENE KB3700 or ENE KB3700B;
* DRAM memory: 256 MiB dynamic RAM;
* Data rate: Dual — DDR333 — 166 Mhz;
* 1024KB SPI-interface flash ROM;
* Mass storage: 1024 MiB SLC NAND flash, high-speed flash controller;
* Drives: No rotating media;
* CAFE ASIC (Camera, Flash Enabler chip, provides high-performance Camera, NAND FLASH and SD interfaces); Marvell 88ALP01: (CAFE specification).

Display:

* Liquid-crystal display: 7.5” Dual-mode TFT display;
* Viewing area: 152.4mm × 114.3mm;
* Resolution: 1200 (H) × 900 (V) resolution (200 DPI);
* Monochrome display: High-resolution, reflective sunlight-readable monochrome mode; Color display: Standard-resolution, Quincunx-sampled, transmissive color mode;
* LCD power consumption: 0.1 Watt with backlight off; 0.2–1.0 Watt with backlight on;
* The display-controller chip (DCON) with memory that enables the display to remain live with the processor suspended; the display and this chip are the basis of our extremely low power architecture; the display controller chip also enables deswizzling and anti-aliasing in color mode.

Integrated peripherals:

* Keyboard: 80+ keys, 1.0mm stroke; sealed rubber-membrane key-switch assembly;
o Keyboard layout details;
o Keyboard layout pictures: international, Thai, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, West African, Urdu, Mongolian, Cyrillic, Amharic;
* Gamepad: Two sets of four-direction cursor-control keys;
* Touchpad: Dual capacitance/resistive touchpad; supports written-input mode; ALPS Electric Dual capacitive/resistive touchpad;
* Audio: AC97-compatible audio audio subsystem; internal stereo speakers and amplifier; internal monophonic microphone; jacks for external headphones and microphone; Analog Devices AD1888 and Analog Devices SSM2211 for audio amplification;
* Wireless networking: Integrated 802.11b/g (2.4GHz) interface; 802.11s (Mesh) networking supported; dual adjustable, rotating coaxial antennas; supports diversity reception; capable of mesh operation when CPU is powered down; Marvell Libertas 88W8388 controller and 88W8015 radio;
* Status indicators: Power, battery, WiFi (2); visible when lid is open or closed; microphone in-use and camera in-use visible when lid is open;
* Video camera: integrated color vision camera; 640×480 resolution at 30FPS; Omnivision OV7670.

External connectors:

* DC power: 6mm (1.65mm center pin) connector; 11 to 18 V input usable, –32 to 40 V input tolerated; power draw limited to 15 W;
* Headphone output: Standard 3.5mm 3-pin switched stereo audio jack;
* Microphone input: Standard 3.5mm 2-pin switched mono microphone jack; selectable 2V DC bias; selectable sensor-input mode (DC or AC coupled);
* USB: Three Type-A USB-2.0 connectors; up to 1A power supplied (total);
* Flash explansion: MMC/SD Card slot.

Battery:

* Pack type: 2 or 4 cells LiFePO4; or 5 cells NiMH, approximately 6V series configuration;
* Capacity: 22.8 Watt-hours (LiFePO4); 16.5 Watt-hours (NiMH);
* Fully-enclosed “hard” case; user removable;
* Electronics integrated with pack provide:
* Identification;
* Battery charge and capacity information;
* Thermal and over-current sensors along with cutoff switch to protect battery;
* Minimum 2,000 charge/discharge cycles (to 50% capacity of new);
* Power management will be critical.

BIOS/loader

* Open Firmware used to load the operating system.

Environmental specifications:

* Temperature: UL certification planned to 45C in Q32007, pending 50C certification in mid-2008;
* Humidity: UL certification planned to IP42 (perhaps higher) when closed, the unit should seal well enough that children walking to and from school need not fear rainstorms and dust;
* Maximum altitude: –15m to 3048m (14.7 to 10.1 PSIA) (operating), –15m to 12192m (14.7 to 4.4 PSIA) (non-operating);
* Shock 125g, 2ms, half-sine (operating) 200g, 2ms, half-sine (non-operating);
* Random vibration: 0.75g zero-to-peak, 10Hz to 500Hz, 0.25 oct/min sweep rate (operating); 1.5g zero-to-peak, 10Hz to 500Hz, 0.5 oct/min sweep rate (nonoperating);
* 2mm plastic walls (1.3mm is typical for most systems).

Regulatory requirements:

* The usual US and EU EMI/EMC (Electromagnetic Interference and Compatibility) requirements will be met;
* The laptop meets IEC 60950-1, EN 60950-1, and CSA/UL 60950-1 specifications. It also complies with UL 1310 and UL 498. In order to guarantee the safety of children using the laptop, it also passes ASTM F 963;
* The external power adapter complies with IEC, EN, and CSA/UL 60950-1;
* The removable battery pack complies with IEC, EN, and CSA/UL 60950-1 and UL 2054;
* RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive – EU) compliant.

Software

XO is built from free and open-source software using components from Red Hat's Fedora Core 6 version of the Linux operating system.
XO will support five programming environments on the laptop:

1. Python, from which it has been built the user interface and the activity model;
2. Javascript for browser-based scripting;
3. Csound, a programmable music and audio environment;
4. Squeak, a version of Smalltalk embedded into a media-rich authoring environment;
5. Logo. And some support Java and Flash.
   

Applications will include:

• A web browser built on Xulrunner, the run-time environment used by the Firefox browser;
• A simple document viewer based upon Evince;
• AbiWord wordprocessor,
• RSS reader,
• email client,
• chat client,
• VOIP client;
• journal
• wiki with WYSIWYG editing;
• multimedia authoring and playback environment;
• music composition toolkit,
• graphics toolkits,
• games,
• shell,
• debugger.

Libraries and plugins used by OLPC include Xul, GTK+, Matchbox, Sugar, Pango, ATK, Cairo, X Window System, Avahi, and gstreamer.

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More Info about the One Laptop Per Child :
OLPC