Progress on PCB Design and on Software

Posted on by Communications Team

Updates on Schematics are being transposed to the PCB design

In February the designer analyzed the Pericom PI7C9X2G608GP PCIe Packet Switch with the direct support of Pericom staff. Now, the Pericom PCIe Packet Switch is fully tested and all the needed setup is completed, so the designer has completed the inclusion of  all required information in the updated version of the schematics and is starting to unravel the PCB. 

The designer has updated the SerDes connections following our suggestions taking into account the notes we have provided, so a new version of the schematics is expected soon.

Arctic-Fox 27.10.1 PPC64 in our Repo

The main contributor to Arctic-Fox – Riccardo Mottola – member of our Power Progress Community association – has released the new version 27.10.1+b0 that we have compiled and packaged in our Debian PPC64 repo. Riccardo says: “Session Store, code greatly improved compared to past releases, performance improvements in both the html engine as well as a new build system imported from Firefox. This release is definitely a great improvement compared to 27.9.19 right at start”

Arctic-Fox 27.10.1 PPC64 running on our T2080-RDB, that has the same processor as our future notebook.

Repository moved to our Power Progress Community GitLab group.

We have created a Gitlab group called Power Progress Community and we moved all our gitlab repositories under https://gitlab.com/power-progress-community. What is important to know is that all URLs have changed and any cloned repository must be rebased. If you have cloned our repositories you should update git remote origin.

Working on Unreal Engine for PowerPC64 Big Endian

We are working on a port of UnrealEngine (UE) to PowerPC 64 Big Endian. We started by forking the PowerPC64 Little Endian (PPC64le) version and we are currently trying to compile the sources. The original PPC64le port for UE 4.23 was developed by Elvis Dowson and Raptor Engineering and can be found at https://github.com/edowson/UnrealEngine/tree/4.23-ppc64le. Access to the UE4 sources requires accepting the Epic Games EULA as described in https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/ue4-on-github.

We have  modified the original scripts to compile for PPC64 Big Endian but so far, we still have to solve multiple errors leading before being able to generate a working binary. You can find our fork and ppc64 branch here https://github.com/robyinno/UnrealEngine/tree/4.23-ppc64 ( to access it you need to accept Epic Games EULA). We are building the source using both a Power9 virtual machine provided by Open OSU and OpenPower Foundation, as well as on our NXP T2080-RDB development kit using Debian PPC64 SID unstable. If you want to help us on fixing the compilation errors, you can start from our UnrealEnginePPC64 Wiki, please contact us.

A screenshot of the ongoing compilation of Unreal Engine on our NXP T2080-RDB developer kit, that has the same PPC64 Big Endian CPU of our future notebook.

PCB design updates and updated components list

Posted on by Communications Team

As we stated in a previous article, we have already contracted ACube Systems and the PCB design work has started. This post is a first report about the work in progress in relation to the PCB design.

These days, the designer is analyzing the Pericom Switch with the direct support of Pericom personnel.

The Pericom PI7C9X2G608GP is a PCIE Gen 2 Switch that provides one upstream port supporting x4 or x1, and 4 or 5 downstream ports that support x1 operation. This chip has a Power Dissipation of 1.2 W.

In our mobo the PI7C9X2G608GP is essential as it allows to connect one 4x PCIe 2.0 controller of the NXP T2080 CPU with four 1x PCIe chips/cards: M.2 3G/LTE card , M.2 WiFi card, 1x Renesas USB3 Controller and 1x C-Media Audio chipset.

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PCB Design Started! Carpe Diem!

Posted on by Communications Team

Four months have passed since we started our donation campaign aimed at the PCB design and we are now at around €6500 (27%) of the goal €24000 for the entire phase 1 of the design, and we must admit that the rate of donations is slower than what we had hoped for.

Phase 1 is subdivided in two subtasks:

  • 1A) PCB Project € 19000
  • 1B) Fast SI bus simulations €5000

In other words, we reached an encouraging 34% of what is required for subtask 1A.

As we really want to speed up as much as possible the activity, we decided to formally split phase 1, and not to wait to reach €24000 to start the design of the PCB.

To do so, we signed a contract with ACube Systems (company we rely on for the design) just for subtask 1A. Doing so gives the chance to start right now the PCB design. At the time of signing the contract, we paid €6000, the amount required by the designer to start working.

Slimbook Eclipse Notebook

One of the reasons forcing us to speed up the planned activities, is linked to the availability of the Slimbook model “Eclipse” that will not last forever, very much like any other commercially available products such as the electronic components we selected during the electrical schematics design phase. In fact, the electrical schematics are customized for the pinouts of that specific Slimbook model, and the PCB design will be specifically shaped to fit in the Slimbook Eclipse chassis. Because of these constraints, we have to finish the PCB design (phase 1A), the fast SI bus simulations (phase 1B) and the prototypes (phase 2) around this summer.

We fixed the end of April 2020 as the time-limit for phase 1A, so we have 3 months left to raise the remaining €12500. As you may well understand this goal is quite ambitious, but it is necessary if we don’t want to risk to fail.

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PCB for a Happy New Year!

Posted on by Communications Team

Orcad Source Schematics Published

At the end of August of 2019 we published the first version of the schematics in pdf format. Then, in October we uploaded the second version and after that the 13th of November we released the Orcad source, accomplishing what we promised.

Schematics Source in EDIF published and ready to be converted to KiCad

Now we have exported it even to EDIF format, to make easier for new volunteers to convert it to Kicad Format. To convert from EDIF to Kicad we have found edif2kicad tools  https://github.com/svn2github/edif2kicad but we are sure you will find other tools or even you will be able to create a new one

OpenStack Debian 10 PPC64 Big Endian created

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Our Open Hardware culture around the cities – videos

Posted on by Roberto Innocenti

Video of the Presentation at Vicenza Linux User Group  – Vicenza – Italy – 26th November 2019

Presented by Roberto Innocenti from Power Progress Community and Enrico Vidale from Acube Systems.

26th November 2019 – Picture of a part of the attenders at ViLug at our speaks

It’s the first time that Power Progress Community and Acube Systems present together the project. This presentation is very comprehensive.

We thanks very much LugVi for the perfect organization and excellent work of video editing done with Olive in Flathub and the good participation from very active and expert people in free software and competent in hardware, that come from all the area (Veneto). It was very exiting and a pleasure to answer to all the questions!

Video of our presentation held the 15th November at sfscons.it Free Software Conference in Bozen, South Tyrol – Italy – where we have talked about “The Butterfly Effect of an Open Hardware Notebook Motherboard”.

Professional photographers of Sfscon.it took pictures of us with our T2080 devkit in our table shared with Linux User Group of Bolzano. You can see running DIY wooden desktop case with the T2080rdb devkit and people  interested that talk with us.

You can see our NXP T2080 Devkit and people interested talking with us
People interested in our project with our brochure

Future Presentations:

Our project will be presented at Paris Open Source Summit ( France)  on 10-11th December thanks to the association April that is devoted to promoting and protecting Free/Libre Software.