The Sirius Handheld Computing Platform

Architecturally, Sirius is very different from the Simputer, even though the intention behind both projects is similar; to develop a low cost handheld computer. Sirius, though, is not limited to being a handheld computer alone. The way it's being designed and built allows for the design to be customized to almost any form factor, without substantial costs. It's more an effort to develop a complete low-cost DIY computing platform - complete with OS, apps and peripherals - than a handheld.

The Simputer was designed to run Linux - a desktop operating system later adapted to small scale devices. This meant that the amount of processing power and resources required to support this adapted OS were substantial. In other words, the Simputer pretty much had to have the same architecture and specifications as a typical handheld device being produced anywhere in the world. There was nothing unique about the architecture or the operating system. The only thing unique was that the the work was done in India, whereas the global technology community was not previously used to such work coming out of anywhere other than the West or the Far East.

Volume is king in the hardware business. In other words, without having high volumes you just cannot bring costs down if you are using a custom design as opposed to off the shelf equipment. Since the Simputer motherboard was a custom design, there was no way in which it would be more cost effective than, say a Palm PC produced by Palm Corp. Why? Because Palm had thousands of times the volume that Amida, the Simputer company ever did. Moreover, the processors being used were similar in functionality. When the Simputer was eventually produced, this shortcoming came to light immediately. The advertised sales price was over $400. Obviously, no one would buy the Simputer at this price when the Palm handhelds were being sold for much less. And hence the Simputer failed.

So a combination of a conventional design, using the same components as other handhelds, not having sufficient volume and using a relatively "heavy" OS that required substantial hardware - all these factors prevented the Simputer project from succeeding.

Learning from the Simputer project, we decided to build a device easily fabricatable in low-volumes. We chose inexpensive microprocessors, and decided to try to make up for the lack of 32 bit processors and other fancy gadgetry by our unique hardware architecture (tri-processor) and high speed, embedded operating system, called AlephOS. Our approach is to make things as simple as possible, but not any simpler. Our cost reduction results from the fact that our OS allows us to use inexpensive components. We have full control over our design and can hence modify the device to even remove entire subsystems that are not required - for instance, the qwerty keyboard can be removed if an application does not require it. All these things put together make our architecture far more unique and drive lower cost. We rely on innovation, not just on volume.