Byran, I have been a professional engineer longer than you have been alive, I can tell you right now that I have met very, very few people that would have the motivation, skill and sticktoitivness to pull this off.
Having said that, even with unlimited time this is such an awesome achievement and really shows the dedication. Well done!
Good job, kid
This is an incredible achievement. And i really don't like, that your comment invited other people to jump onboard & comment in a way belittling the achievements– even if just implicitly, to make themselves feel better why a high-schooler is doing things like that.
If all that was really the main driver, HN frontpage should be flooded with projects made by high-schoolers. But it is not. It might be contributing factor.
Btw: Funnily enough, i would expect these type of excuses & self-comforting negativity from high-schoolers.
What makes you think he is in high school
On the contrary, even though we've had top marks in the top math school in the same country, we'd never ever hoped to get even $200 for a project. Were we good enough to build a computer - of course, it's not that hard once you get the basics, and once you've done x86 assembly in your early teens. But it was just impossible to even think about spending the money, or loosing them per se.
Exeter Philips school has quote "700 acres, 147 buildings, the world's largest high school library". And I'm sure also lots of engineering development facilities where you can actually get your hands dirty. I can imagine the progress had I found myself there by some miracle. This kid is absolute winner to be in it, but I bet his parents must have also won the lottery ticket, one way or another, cause UK education is crazy expensive.
Now, in order to not make this story super sad, let's admit that, even though we as schoolkids didn't have access to such campus and funding, by last year in school I could track music with FT2; build Linux kernel and write ASM/C/C++/Perl; operated a BBS; debugged the IE9 source with VXDs and all; took part in writing two demoscene productions, that we still proud of; and finally, but not lest being a bunch of smart kinds in their 20s we started a hosting company in 1998(or '99) which soon handled the amount of traffic which equaled that of the whole country. This all with no GPTs, no Google searches, not even forums that much back then. So of course, it matters, that you are not a dumbass, after all.
But nobody ever gave us the security to pursue dreams the way this kid does. And I'm absolutely convinced we could've put together a laptop or something along the line. I say put together, because a lot of these parts are easily available now, one click away, nothing like what it was back in the day. He's not producing the chips, neither the screen, neither putting elements together, but the chassis and kbd, and does some wiring. Of course - fascinating for a teenager to do, but you see, teenagers are not so stupid, and never were. And those in top schools are particularly bright and outpace many adults in many areas. From the images I can tell this is a school projects, so perhaps it took also a little mentoring to do it.
This always make me think about two things - it absolutely matters which school you are lucky to have gone to; and very likely all talent is lost soon after high-school, because... reasons.
Bryan is in his last year of high school.
</end>
Keep building!
I hope this turns into something I can buy (maybe a diy kit), in the future!
- Go to a fancy private school like Phillips Exeter
- Really luck out and get into a great public STEM magnet school
- Homeschool and take private classes / have very smart parents
(He also taught us differentiation in the first semester, and basic integrals in the second, because as he said, you cannot learn physics properly without those tools. This annoyed the heck out of our math teacher; she ended up deciding that, if we're learning this anyway, we might as well learn it properly - and gave us a much heavier intro to calculus in the last months of the last year.)
There are some obvious next steps for improving the polish on this, would you say you were more resource constrained, time constrained, or skill constrained?
For instance, did you put any thought into making flex PCBs to make the cable routing easier?
I also think the concept of a laptop with a removable wireless keyboard is brilliant, and I think your implementation is a lot cleaner than e.g. the Surface or the iPad's case-keyboards. If I had a laptop that did that, it would be my go-to travel machine. One less thing to cart around.
I'm honored that you think my keyboard implementation is nice! I put a lot of thought into it — truly. Oh btw the keyboard works just as well as a solo device. I've used the keyboard more than the computer in some ways. Thanks!
I think one of the limitations to the keyboard concept you have is that it complicates using the laptop base as a stand for the screen in a tablet configuration. Outside of tablets with fully detachable keyboards (e.g. the Surface or the iPad pro), I don't think anybody has a good design for that. Was a touchscreen ever a consideration for stretch goals or design for expansion?
It also has two screens and its own stand, I use it as my travel machine.
It’s posts like this, fueled by incredible community support, that make Hacker News not just great but unmatched.
With 2,000 points (and counting), this Show HN is currently ranked as the 4th-best Show HN of all time. If we exclude the #1 post (this upvotes itself)—which isn’t a true project—this post would be the 3rd-best of all time. Who knows? By tomorrow, it may surpass 2,741 points and claim the #1 spot outright.
Outstanding work, Bryan. All the best.
Again, just gobsmacked by this entire project.
> By tomorrow, it may surpass 2,741 points and claim the #1 spot outright.
Indeed! I just woke up to find that the post has got 2,742 points which officially make it the best Show HN of all time! You can see the full list here: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=show+hn
Byran, you now have probably the best C.V. you can use for any job and you should be proud of yourself.
Congratulations!
Show HN: This up votes itself - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3742902 - March 2012 (82 comments)
But that one had the unfair advantage of, er, upvoting itself. Also, it was meta, so the upvoters were on crack (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).
Byran's has reached #2, which makes it the most-upvoted in 13 years!
It was a truly difficult undertaking! I was ready to quit at so many moments, but I always think about the final mission of sharing this little piece of knowledge with the world. :)
I was reading this over thinking "this guy should be working for Framework". It would be a total win-win.
One thing I didn't see mentioned in the video is the total cost of all the materials to complete one laptop not including all the experimentation cost. I'd be super curious about that.
Personally I'm a bit disappointed that it's based on Rockchip.
If someone can come up with low cost open source laptop with RPi compute module 5 with 16GB RAM I think it will selling like hot cakes given the software and hardware eco-system that exist round RPi [1]. It just that the compute module has yet to come with 16GB RAM unlike the normal RPi 5 but it will probably just around the corner [2].
[1] Compute Module 5:
https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/compute-module-5/
[2] New 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 on sale now at $120 (191 comments):
Why would you?
You mentioned Raspberry where, compared to the competition, you pay more for the name while they deliver even the same capabilities or more bang for the buck... Don't get me wrong. Huge Raspi fan here. I have 3 models laying around here, because they are the easiest to purchase. But the competition is not to be overlooked.
Also, aren't the compute modules strandarized or compatible? So it should be interchangeable, no?
You did the smart thing there with the SoM (for the uninitiated: power sequencing to individual parts of an SoC and its external components is an epic hassle to get right and that's assuming you actually have proper documentation - without it it's an utter pain), but how in hell did you get the high frequency stuff working out on what was likely your first or second try? This is IMHO where your work really shines.
USB-C, DisplayPort (at 4K to boot) and PCIe at modern speeds are all but black magic to most, this isn't digital any more, this is good old analog circuitry and physics at work that most people don't even learn in university any more.
I had the honor of learning high speed signaling from the best. I met some super cool people from Silicon Valley and research universities (from past work, like the MUREX Ethernet Switch). The ZMK Firmware community too!
Just looked it up... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40694254 for those who want a direct link.
Jesus. Wish I had had even a fraction your talent at that age. Most impressive.
Suggestion: It would be nice to include a price list on the article.
This project is impressive as heck, but aside from being intellectually out-of-reach for most kids, it would be financially challenging as well. Last I looked, CNC aluminum blocks were well out of the reach of 99.9% of kids (but that was decades ago; perhaps prices went down).
For people wanting to follow in those footsteps, it'd be nice to know which things cost $5, which $50, $500, or $5000. Just that kind of intuition is helpful.
So there's probably a price there, but it's probably well under $1k
Price list would be cool to have
really hoping Byran's excellent writeup helps encourage others. SoMs have lowered the barrier to entry and birthed a ton of SBC/carrier communities, but most of their tribal knowledge is buried in discord servers
What I've found is that it's a bad idea to use USB extension cables; these can introduce bit errors if e.g. you copy large amounts of data (order of terabytes). It's much better to insert a USB drive directly into a carrier board, but this is not always physically possible.
I agree with USB extension cables concerns too! The error would increase depending on the quality (impedance, power, etc.)
Yes, this is often the case but sometimes the USB-C connectors are on the same side of the board where you also need to plug in some cables that you need internally (maybe even other USB devices). Thus the option of letting an USB-C port stick out on one side of the enclosure is not always available.
> I agree with USB extension cables concerns too! The error would increase depending on the quality (impedance, power, etc.)
Yes, and the user of your device (who doesn't see the internal cable) will assume that they can plug in their own cable, so you'll have two cables.
Not sure what’s meant by “high end” here. Performance is a rather important aspect, and the RK3588 this uses will make it slower than almost every laptop on the market. Practically all are twice as fast (both single- and multi-core), most are 3–5× multi-core, and the best approach 7× (paired with 2.5× single-core).
Looking at Lenovo India, they sell three laptops that are slower multi-core and maybe slower single-core (running Celeron N4020 or Athlon Silver 7120U); after that, they’re all at least twice as fast, in both single- and multi-core benchmarks.
(I’m simplifying to PassMark’s single-/multi-core scores, using <https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Rockchip+RK3588&id=...> and such.)
From <https://www.byran.ee/posts/creation>: “In many aspects, the Rockchip RK3588 is the fastest consumer-procurable chip on the market.” As someone not involved in these spaces, this was my vague impression, but it still ends up disappointing if you simply can’t get good performance for a project like this because only bigger companies can buy the better-performance things. It’s an extremely impressive project, but unfortunately will be rendered not viable for many—probably most—people for this one reason. That makes me sad. I wish they’d sell us the good stuff.
It's very impressive work and it makes me so happy to see real hacker news on HN. This is real hacking.
1. Make sure the bootloader (u-boot) loads the kernel as fast as possible.
- Disable automatic Ethernet/USB/other subsystems initialization (you can keep them enabled, just don't activate unless requested in the shell manually by the user)
- Tune `distro_bootcmd` command
- Make sure that MicroSD/eMMC/SSD works full-speed (with proper clocks and speed protocol)
2. Use fast decompression algorithm for the kernel and initramfs
- It's either zstd or gzip
3. Collect boot file access data and sort the files on the filesystem
- The benefit in near-linear access & read-ahead
My Orange Pi 5 Plus boots to sway+firefox already open in about 15s and a lot of it is waiting for net being online.
7.125s systemd-networkd-wait-online.serviceWow! And I'm guessing if he attempts a 2nd edition, it'll probably be even thinner, lighter, and faster!
Looks like an MIT admissions portfolio project. Don’t know if it fits the uniqueness category for it but I guess the quality of the end product makes it good enough.
Admittedly this isn’t fully open source like the Novena or the Reform but I doubt adcomms care. I just wish I was rich enough and skilled enough to be able to spend $4.5k on a neat project like this.
In terms of college, still waiting :)
And possibly the year before.
Well, well done. Good luck to you!
Very impressed by what you have done here. Kudos to you on achieving designing and building a whole laptop!
How about the embedded software? Probably not. This is OK as I understand this project is a huge achievemnt. Thank YOU
I've always thought it would be good for hard drive software ( embedded software on the actual drive or SSD ) to be open source. My thinking on such a situation is such a project could start with a storage device from maybe 5 years more more ago - as in my opinion the software would be a less technological challenge. (( I mean take an existing already manufactured working storage device ( ssd or hard drive ) and replace the embedded commercial software with open source software. This would remove the technological barrier of actually constructing the hard drive hard. ))
The entire linux install is OSS, the keyboard is in ZMK, and the EC firmware is written in Arduino.
>...
> Exeter is one of the nation's wealthiest boarding schools, with a financial endowment of $1.6 billion as of June 2024, and houses the world's largest high school library.
>...
>Its list of notable alumni includes U.S. President Franklin Pierce, U.S. Senator Daniel Webster, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and three winners of the Nobel Prize.
I just want to throw money at you! We need an open source laptop!!
P.S. @Hello9999901 any relation to "Bunnie" Huang?
I have a board with old MT6572, it idles at 270mW with working CPU, even less when in semi-sleep (turns off CPU and wakes up every half a second).
2.4W – idle
The laptop form factor hasn't really changed in decades. It's a rectangle with a screen in the lid and a keyboard in the base. Below the keyboard is a battery and a system board. The battery has to be replaced when it wears out and the system board when it becomes obsolete, but then why aren't they both fungible parts? If you take any arbitrary ATX PC from many years ago, you can replace the system board/CPU/memory/storage with modern ones and carry on using the same chassis, screen, power supply and keyboard provided they meet the required specs for the new parts (and they often do).
So why can't I do this with the average laptop, instead of having to replace $200-$300 worth of perfectly good parts or more each time I want an upgrade?
On a less joking note, I wonder if I'm decent at Factorio, I could learn this.
Doesn't matter why, pretty sick. I'm studying physics myself, so its pretty inspiring to see you do this
how much was it to get the case milled?
Mental note, a commercial laptop of similar specs should never cost more than $4,673.81.
It is no doubt an incredible achievement. I don't like the 'anyone can do this' when that clearly isn't true - it comes across as a humble brag and seems to be a strong part of hustle culture. I would much prefer 'anyone with a decent amount of money and a high enough intelligence can do this', or 'this is now far easier to do than it has ever been'.
I do like the idea of MIT being a beacon to the best and brightest and I do think that the lack of a level playing field means that many otherwise talented people miss out on that opportunity. Perhaps what I would really like is for the world to have more MITs but I don't know if that is possible and I worry that attempts to do this would undermine the quality of MIT. So perhaps I should be content that MIT exists as is and that some people get to go there even if I did not - we all benefit from the fruits of their labor. My university was a top tier university renowned for harsh grading and I was still rather disappointed by the quality of my peers and I worry that the quality at universities in general has since declined further.
Cheap and high quality small batch electronics and hardware fabrication is rapidly changing the world in a way that I think few people understand. It used to be that you had to have a decent size company to do this kind of stuff and that company needed capital investment, layers of management etc. So the cost of bringing a widget into the world was really expensive, risky, and took a long time. The only way to make that money back was to do things in bulk and sell a lot of them which meant you had to be sure there was a sufficient target market. These days a single person can design and fabricate a single item for comparatively very little. And if they want to make it accessible to the rest of the world there is no need to build a factory, just upload the plans. If it's a popular design in all likelihood someone in China will produce it in bulk at commodity prices. The speed of commodification has become so fast that it's practically instant. There is a bit of a phenomena going on at the moment with 'high tech overproduction' where it is claimed that China is intentionally over producing high tech goods to undermine Western markets - it's my view that they're ahead of us on the commodification curve. As manufacturing also manufactures the manufacturing tools the commodification process is a self reinforcing cycle.
1. Breadboards are the best thing I can use, to create a PCB, I can only rely on manually soldering connections on a general-purpose PCB (the kind of PCB with many holes). And I had never heard of EDA at that time (~2008-12ish)
2. Being raised in a family where my parents never went to college, they can't give me any help and advice in study, let alone the funding. It took me 2 years of begging to convince my parents to buy me a computer, which already costs them 2 months of wages.
3. In the small town in middle west China where I grown up, I searched every corner of the library, only to find 2 or 3 books that are related to electronics, and I spent all my time after school studying them. I can't find anyone who are also interested in the same things I was doing, I was all on my own.
What happened then?
1. I studied hard on the only books I found, and learned about C51 microcontrollers, and that introduced me to the world of programming
2. I took a selective examination and went to one of the most prestigious high school in the capital of the province (Changsha, Hunan), and because of my intests in programming, I took part in olymptics in informatics, which is competitive algorithmic contest, and got the entrance to one of the best universities of China
3. After graduation and 5 years of working as a professional programmer, I was finally able to give myself a good environment for what I loved as a kid, something people like Bryan would already have when they were born. I bought myself 3d printing machines, and learned EDA and found JLC, PCBWays are so helpful.
I really wish I could have all these when I was young, but I think I'll give myself all the things my parents can't, and make myself a kid again, to learn and to play.
Hopefully Byran doesn't mind that glitch in this otherwise rapturous and justly triumphant reception :)
I feel like this thread is helping HN to reorganize itself around its proper purpose.
Love the parts research you did.
People like Byran live amongst us
Making their own laptops but from SCRATCH
Imagine how good this man’s pasta carbonara tastes
The mixed presentation of plug and play components interspersed with EE problems and solution really helped make it more accessible. It also got me excited about the possibilities and made me realize that we we might already approaching another open architecture DIY boom.
I got the sense that this is a side project, but I'm sure many have noticed that it could be a legit framework-level company. Someone already mentioned the recruiters, but also you're sure to have investors knocking. Whatever you do, please keep having fun and sharing it.
The part I am most interested in is the 'powertrain' and how it manages battery charging.
[1] https://wiki.friendlyelec.com/wiki/index.php/CM3588_NAS_Kit#...
It's lovely to see HN so nice and friendly, keep it up guys!
Just joking, incredibly impressive!
---
It was neat to read through the progress log (1), which begins,
> "It was around 1AM. I wrote up the mission goal (2) and went to sleep at 2AM. The start",
and ends:
> "With the YouTube video and blog post almost done, I hope this isn’t the last of anyon_e. But rather, the start of a trailblazing journey."
This project is the epitome of MUREX Electrical's mission statement, "attempt the impossible":
It's "impossible", a non-MUREX Robotics Electrical member might say. However, we accept it as the process. In the end, we will have achieved something others might have called "impossible". But the achievement only comes through endless, motivated attempts at the impossible. (3)
2: https://www.byran.ee/posts/mission, which links to (3)
3: https://github.com/murexrobotics/electrical?tab=readme-ov-fi...
Honestly though, I think the maturity shown in his write-up impressed me even more.
Inspirational.
Please hire this guy to help you make the thinkpad's keyboard to do wireless magic with the trackpoint and the mouse buttons include. Thanks
Talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djb0T9COjD4
Article by Wilczek on Anyons
Just commenting so I can't come back later and claim I wasn't stealing lots of ideas from the author for my own project; the hinge problem, keycaps, the mainboard designed on KiCAD, are all interesting.
Maybe laptop should have two layers or parts.One for Motherboard and memory and another for connectors, fans, power supply, battery etc. Then we can have more standard even if a little thicker.
Feel like you could make a pared down version of this with commodity parts outside of the chassis if you aren't going for a flagship competitor. I guess you could also just buy a $20 chromebook, too. Maybe...you could fit a nice rockchip SOM inside a chromebook??
I'd be really happy with myself if I just built a case and put off-the-shelf components in it.
Congrats on the awesome project! Actually, I think 'well done' is more fitting since this must have taken a ton of work and willpower!
How much did it cost to make this open-source laptop? My wild guess is it's around $500-750.
i didn't find any firwmware in the repo (didn't look exhaustively) but I did find that the SoC this is based on is supported by https://github.com/edk2-porting/edk2-rk3588 .
AFAICT the azoteq trackpad has proprietary firmware, so if that's true then i won't call this laptop fully open source. but from a practical perspective, i am much less worried about that then the boot path.
love the keyboard, wish i could test drive it!
so instead, i was left very, very impressed!
> I ran out of time
And then realized this was a ... high school project!?
Way to go, amazing work!
Not quite llama.cpp level easy but definitely doable.
For 7B class models the speed is usable
+7B means "additional 7B"
if you want to say "more than" or "at least", you say "7B+"
This is what can happen when you live on a campus and don’t waste your life commuting.
Thank you for your service to the free and open source principle. Richard Stallman and Eric Steven Raymond would be proud.
You are clearly a very clever person and you do not need a web app wiggly graph thingie to throw ideas together.
There's no need to gild a lily!
Please keep the faith - I love that you are focussed on being altruistic and sharing your skills to the benefit of everyone.
Thank you.