What say you Purism community ?
There are already some mini PCs with that processor with touch screens like the HiGole 2 Pro, the HiGole F9B, the SZBox S7, the Morefine M11.
Also, that processor seems to use very little power and has excellent Linux support (It’s the processor used in the Juno Tab 3).
Purism could reuse the Librem 5 excellent design with just a few changes:
1 - Change the processor to the Intel N100, that means it will immediately have 100% Linux support
2 - Change the screen to a 7 inch screen - Some of us no longer have very good eye sight and the tiny 5.7 inch screen on the Librem 5 makes it hard to read what’s on the screen. Also some of us are taller and would prefer the larger screen.
3 - Use the extra space behind the bigger screen to accommodate a larger battery, literally as large as possible.
4 - Maybe choose a camera module that has Android drivers so it works on Waydroid (I know that’s not a priority for the purists, but there are many people out there who would buy products and need Android App compatibility).
This would probably not require tons of investment by Purism (Since it keeps mostly the same PCB) and I have to imagine this phone would use exactly the same software as the Librem 11.
Further, future maintenance would probably be simpler, since any work done for either the laptops or the Librem 11 would also work for this phone.
It would probably also require fewer patches to get it working with an x86 CPU.
Purism could under clock the CPU by default (battery saving mode in the BIOS), but off course allow the users to disable that to make it more powerful.
Larger device and larger battery … could make quite a heavy phone.
Also, given that the current design is based around a particular ARM chip, I don’t see going to Intel as an easy hardware change. (Conversely, while such a change might get greater commonality between the Librem 7 and the Librem 11, I don’t know that Purism did the design of the Librem 11, so adapting it may not be straightforward.)
Then there are the questions around blob status for any Intel CPU.
I was thinking of this as an intermediate step to gain some money to help develop the librem eco system, so long as it didn’t mean too much effort.
I was under the impression that since the Juno tab 3 uses it (also many mini pcs) that Purism wouldn’t need to do much firmware work, is that not the case?
While I find Risc-V very cool, I’m not sure it’s ready to be used in a phone in terms of performance, I might be mistaken though.
All x86 Intel CPU generations past Nahalem have various degrees of microcode (Intel ME) that increasingly become difficult to remove the more modern the generation is. The tradeoff of using x86 is user freedom to remove this microcode.
A phone in general is less demanding of performance. Probably any of the three options being floated here (the current NXP ARM, Intel N100, RISC-V) would be adequate from a performance perspective. There are however so many other considerations.
Note that the Intel ME and the microcode are separate and unrelated things, although they might both be a problem from a strict perspective of blobware.
No. I intended power consumption to be among those “other considerations”. My comment was strictly about CPU performance (speed). However you raise a good point about the associated GPU support and capability.
Power consumption is in direct relation to calculation performance. You can increase the calculation performance by 50% if it costs 100% more power consumption (random numbers - showing direction). But we need a good performance at low power consumption.
In additional, if you reduce the physical nm-size you can get more calculation performance with same consumption.
Note that the Intel ME and the microcode are separate and unrelated things
Are you sure about that? I’m no firmware developer but, I am pretty sure we say “IntelME” to refer to the actual hardware inside the CPU (the CPU inside the CPU), that hardware needs code to run, that code is in the microcode. Not all microcode is for IntelME, I think it also does other things.
RISK-V is a long way off.
EDIT: Wellp, this is all wrong. @irvinewade is right. What runs on the IntelME is just called IntelME Firmware, and the microcode is what is translating and executing x86 CPU instructions. Sorry >.<
Indeed. For that reason, if we are talking about a hypothetical successor to the Librem 5, I would rather that Purism stuck with the NXP ARM and just went with a die shrink when NXP releases a suitable successor to the Librem 5’s current CPU.
I acknowledge that you have updated your post … but the Intel ME is a separate CPU. So if you have a four core x86 CPU then you actually have five x86 cores in a manner of speaking. However that fifth core (the Intel ME) runs independently of the normal four cores, is not directly compatible with the other cores, may not be located in the same silicon, runs specific and unique firmware out of flash, and certainly can’t run your own software. However all of this is largely opaque i.e. serious security fail (security through obscurity), and not a great basis for any device where security not only has to be done but has to be seen to be done.
So, microcode runs on a (micro)CPU inside each of the normal cores, while the Intel ME runs alongside the normal cores.
I guess it is open to the Intel ME CPU to use (completely separate) microcode of its own. To be honest, I haven’t ever seen that question discussed but, again, it is all obscure-by-design.
Disclaimer: The above are generic comments about Intel x86 CPUs today. I didn’t check anything to be specifically correct for the Intel N100 and at a certain lower level of embedded system (system-on-chip) it may be desirable for Intel to adopt a different arrangement i.e. most people don’t need remote hardware management on a phone and the very thought of it should raise massive red flags.
Until a Risk-V CPU is at a competitive enough point. I hope we’re getting to this point rather sooner than later (even if my expectations a low for now).
My concern about RISC-V is more about Purism starting from scratch with a complete board redesign (whether for Intel or RISC-V) v. in the ideal case, a drop-in replacement NXP ARM CPU if one became available. Do they have the resources to start from scratch? Can it be financially justified? I suspect (with no actual knowledge) that a RISC-V Librem phone could only be done, in the future, by funding it from the sales of the existing phone and hence that’s where resources need to be deployed right now i.e. buffing off the rough edges of the existing phone.
Ideally they should stay on NXP until the software has a solid state. This is more important for the whole “mission” of spreading Linux phone devices - especially with non tech users in mind. The first big step is done, of cause, but you know, there is still work left over and it’s not enough that few people are working on Phosh. Even suspend is “experimental” - not to forget other lower priority things as camera and microphone API + front end stack.
I agree with you. My post is more an “on top” thing.
The 7-inch screen size and associated overall dimensions are enough to kill my interest. That’s getting into unwieldy, unpocketable tablet-territory, to say nothing of the added weight if Purism continues its isolation-of-components design goals (as already mentioned).
However, if Purism decides to manufacture it without excluding, say, a “Librem 4-to-4.5,” then more power to them, and to you.
EDIT: I wouldn’t mind the addition of some kind of magnifying software to the UI, though, since you mentioned improved visibility.
no thank you. (Intel ME)