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Questions for Nokia

Revision as of 10:07, 16 August 2008

This page collects questions from the community on the availability of drivers, hardware support and documentation and other resources associated with elements of the Nokia internet tablets.

Hardware support questions

Status of PowerVR MBX driver [2] and OpenGL implementation

We have PowerVR MBX chips sat in our N8x0 machines, doing, afaict, not a lot. It would be nice if it worked (think OpenGL loveliness in games, and I would hope some frivolous but eye catching snazzy desktop features - prettier UI = more publicity = more sales; perhaps...). There are Linux 2.6.x kernel drivers available, though not for the right kernel version and for the OMAP2430 rather than OMAP2420. —Simon Pickering

Deadline for answer: maemo summit.--qgil 18:57, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

How does the latest reply to this bug affect this question? --Simon Pickering (lardman)

Daniel has very well indicated what are the plans and reasons until Diablo. The deadline above is to answer about the future.--qgil 05:42, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Status of DSP SBC task

In the roadmap there used to be (what I interpreted as) mention of implementing a DSP task to handle encoding audio for A2DP use (where A2DP stands for Advanced Audio Distribution Protocol and is a Bluetooth protocol for sending data to Bluetooth stereo headsets [1]). SBC stands for subband codec, which is the default encoding method required by A2DP hardware. At the moment this encoding must be carried out by the ARM in software, but if the task could be offloaded to the DSP it would free up the ARM to do other things (such as decoding video better). —Simon Pickering

We have a working (but not-realtime yet) DSP task for this, so not a major priority for me at least --Simon Pickering (lardman) 17.05 19 June 2008 BST.

Working real-time now, and with ARM @400MHz (DSP @133MHz) DSP task is here. Integration with media player, etc., is next step... --Simon Pickering (lardman) 08.58 16 July 2008 BST.

Status of IVA

This is part of the OMAP2420 and stands for Imaging and Video Accelerator chip. Its abilities are described at the end of this document [3], in the specifications. It looks like it could do some useful acceleration. There is however no real information available (from Ti or elsewhere) about what it is, and how to program it, though there are some hints, e.g. [4]. The DSP gateway (which is the bridge software between the ARM and the DSP) has been expanded to allow it to interface with the IVA, but the patches say that there's no driver for the IVA itself [5]. Is this being pursued (as there's little we can do about it as we have no information) and if not, why not? —Simon Pickering

I understand that the IVA is some specialized HW plus an ARM7TDMIE core. Why is it not being used? Lack of time/it doesn't work very well/no-one wanted to write code for it/etc.? --Simon Pickering (lardman) 13.25 22 June 2008 BST.

Status of AGPS support

We have heard that there is AGPS software floating around inside Nokia. Is there any idea when we are likely to see this, and what method will it use to supply the data to the GPS chipset? Will it be possible for us to feed it data, i.e. will there be an API that we can access? —Simon Pickering

This seems to be public knowledge by now. --qgil 18:57, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Can we have an API so we can plug our own location service in (GeoClue anyone?) to provide the initial location for the SUPL server? --Simon Pickering (lardman) 09.00 16 July 2008 BST.

I'll ask when the guys come from holidays. I know location API will improve but let me find out the details. In the meantime, have you tried knocking the door at http://www.nokia.com/betalabs/agps-tablet ? Direct access to location developers.--qgil 09:12, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Wifi modules

Is there any work being done to make binary only wifi modules open completely (definitively)? Or is it possible for Nokia to supply it in object form or at least updated as the kernel API changes over time? —Nick Loeve

We can't give much details at this point, but something is going on and it should meet at least the basic community expectations. A safe deadline for an answer would be the maemo summit.--qgil 18:59, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Video out

Is there any reason video out is not supported? Or is it already and we just don't know about it? --Simon Pickering (lardman) 10.26 6 August 2008 (BST)

There should be tablets supporting video out for the presentations in the Maemo Summit. Let's ask there the guys providing them.  ;) --qgil 09:51, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Just to clarify, I was asking about the availability of video out through the 3.5mm jack, were you also referring to this Quim? --lardman 11.25 6 August 2008 (BST)

Ah, through the jack. Anyway, let's ask them. I'm about to start holidays and then I will have 15 days for the OSiM & Summit sprint, so unless someone else takes the initiative I won't have time to dig on this.--qgil 19:47, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Open/closed software status questions for Nokia

Mapping Openness

Will maemo core provide list of maemo components with their open/close status + reasons for each component why it is closed. —hrw

Now this is an accepted task in the 100 Days action plan. See Increasing transparency.

tablet-browser

Why is the tablet-browser-ui closed? —GeneralAntilles 20:38, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Bookmark manager engine

I want to programmatically access and manipulate bookmarks. Why is the bookmark manager engine closed? —Iñigo Illán Aranburu

EAP hardware/codec DSP headers

I would like to be create a sink which can output audio directly from the DSP (in fact I'd like to move towards an OpenMAX style setup and be able to string decoders/encoders and sinks together). Could we have the headers/example code to allow us to use the EAP_* functions? -lardman 11:05, 16 August 2008 (BST)

Bug/bug tracker related questions for Nokia

Thumb keyboard and text cell renderers

When will the thumb keyboard bug with text cell renderers (to edit table cells, e.g. in maemopad+ or todo) be fixed? how are priorities assigned inside of nokia to such bugs? —Thomas 'thp' Perl

Bug number/URL, please?--qgil 19:12, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I believe it's bug #1958. —GeneralAntilles 14:08, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Security bugs

When will the bugs tagged 'security' in bugzilla be acknowledged and fixed? Some have been open since early 2007 without even an acknowledgement from the maintainer. I ask Nokia because, to date, all these bugs are in Nokia-contributed code. Will responsiveness to security issues ever become a priority at Nokia? Will there, for example, ever be a public security contact for Nokia products? Will Nokia (or the security@maemo.org staff, which today consists entirely of Nokia people) provide/produce a list of all upstream packages (and their version numbers) for ITOS versions to facilitate tracking of security issues in upstream code? —Olle Segerdahl

The information available about security is located at http://maemo.org/community/security.html . If you need to know more or you think there should be additional information in that page please use the contact provided there.--qgil 19:12, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Fyi http://maemo.org/community/security.html has been updated after the Maemo 4.1 / OS2008 Feature Upgrade release.--qgil 09:32, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Documentation related questions for Nokia

dmse and bme

Is it likely that some documentation (or code) will be made available in the future for the dsme and bme components for power/battery/charging/device control on the tablets?

Serial interface

Is it possible to document the serial pins for the N8x0 devices?

The pins on the n800 are somewhat documented by keesj at the old wiki --trickie 14:05, 17 June 2008 (UTC)