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The State of Owner-Controlled Computing as Talos Winds Down

1 points by xoa 9y ago

Quequau 9y ago
I find this kinda confusing, seeing how there's a link [0] to the "Talos II" Power 9 workstation 'pre-announcement' page (or whatever polite folks are calling vapourware these days) here today as well. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14803535 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14803535
- xoa 9y ago
  Talos II is a followup to to their attempted crowd funding attempt of a POWER8 based "Talos Secure Workstation" last year, which did not meet its funding goal and failed. This article is a sort of post-mortem by them on why they thought it mattered and was still worth pursuing, and after the last 6 month's developments in x86 it seems worth a revisit (and perhaps some of the works exploring a tightening grip on general purpose computing by Cory Doctorow and such). They made some basic blunders in the launch of their crowd funding campaign, such as only offering a maxed out super expensive workstation at the start and adding still expensive, but much more sane options later. It's hard to say whether that would have actually made any significant difference given how far they were from their minimum target, but that sort of thing does sap momentum. Perhaps they've found a better angle with lessons learned (or the economics have improved since last year). They claim Talos II will be open for pre-orders next month, so whether it ends up being vaporware may become at least somewhat clearer at that point (an actual preorder certainly isn't shipping, but it's more serious then a mere announcement or "coming someday" product page too). It's not as if POWER9 is generally available yet anyway.
xoa 9y ago
This was previously on HN but only got a few comments, and in light of today's confirmation that AMD has no near future plans to open up its PSP it seemed worth a repost. With AMD's announcement post-2006(Intel)/2013(AMD) x86 will remain with a fully manufacturer-controlled access module for the foreseeable future, ARM is a mess, so OpenPOWER remains worth at least keeping in mind as a hedge. Raptor is apparently trying again with a "Talos II" system [0] based on the upcoming general release of POWER9, though details remain unclear as it won't even be open to pre-order until next month, if they hit their target. It's doubtful, even with the technical community controversy around the ME earlier this year, that there will be much general willingness to pay a significant premium for owner control unless something extremely malicious, widespread, and directly end user noticeable (as something other then some slowdown) takes advantage of a hole or capability related to it. But I don't think it's unreasonable to keep it in the back of our minds, or for big enough open source projects to at least attempt to keep some flexibility with regards to not letting themselves fall too deeply into x86-only design. Also, though it's not free multi-architecture work can healthy for project self-discipline and useful in finding bugs regardless of whether it's ultimately deployed beyond the primary target. ---- 0: http://raptorcs.com/TALOSII/prerelease.php?target=2 http://raptorcs.com/TALOSII/prerelease.php?target=2

1 points by xoa 9y ago

I find this kinda confusing, seeing how there's a link [0] to the "Talos II" Power 9 workstation 'pre-announcement' page (or whatever polite folks are calling vapourware these days) here today as well. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14803535 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14803535

xoa 9y ago
Talos II is a followup to to their attempted crowd funding attempt of a POWER8 based "Talos Secure Workstation" last year, which did not meet its funding goal and failed. This article is a sort of post-mortem by them on why they thought it mattered and was still worth pursuing, and after the last 6 month's developments in x86 it seems worth a revisit (and perhaps some of the works exploring a tightening grip on general purpose computing by Cory Doctorow and such). They made some basic blunders in the launch of their crowd funding campaign, such as only offering a maxed out super expensive workstation at the start and adding still expensive, but much more sane options later. It's hard to say whether that would have actually made any significant difference given how far they were from their minimum target, but that sort of thing does sap momentum. Perhaps they've found a better angle with lessons learned (or the economics have improved since last year). They claim Talos II will be open for pre-orders next month, so whether it ends up being vaporware may become at least somewhat clearer at that point (an actual preorder certainly isn't shipping, but it's more serious then a mere announcement or "coming someday" product page too). It's not as if POWER9 is generally available yet anyway.

xoa 9y ago

This was previously on HN but only got a few comments, and in light of today's confirmation that AMD has no near future plans to open up its PSP it seemed worth a repost. With AMD's announcement post-2006(Intel)/2013(AMD) x86 will remain with a fully manufacturer-controlled access module for the foreseeable future, ARM is a mess, so OpenPOWER remains worth at least keeping in mind as a hedge. Raptor is apparently trying again with a "Talos II" system [0] based on the upcoming general release of POWER9, though details remain unclear as it won't even be open to pre-order until next month, if they hit their target. It's doubtful, even with the technical community controversy around the ME earlier this year, that there will be much general willingness to pay a significant premium for owner control unless something extremely malicious, widespread, and directly end user noticeable (as something other then some slowdown) takes advantage of a hole or capability related to it. But I don't think it's unreasonable to keep it in the back of our minds, or for big enough open source projects to at least attempt to keep some flexibility with regards to not letting themselves fall too deeply into x86-only design. Also, though it's not free multi-architecture work can healthy for project self-discipline and useful in finding bugs regardless of whether it's ultimately deployed beyond the primary target. ---- 0: http://raptorcs.com/TALOSII/prerelease.php?target=2 http://raptorcs.com/TALOSII/prerelease.php?target=2