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Interesting project and wish them best of luck. On the claim: >However, no modern device is “fully open” - no usable computer exists today that has completely
by miguelr2201 6y ago
Interesting project and wish them best of luck.
On the claim:
>However, no modern device is “fully open” - no usable computer exists today that has completely open software and hardware (as much as some companies want to market themselves as such)
Doesn't RaptorCS[1] offer a fully open modern device? Or is there a closed part I'm not aware of?
[1] https://www.raptorcs.com/ https://www.raptorcs.com/
- marcan_42 6y agoIs their silicon design open? Their internal boot ROM? Their microcode? :-) What I'm trying to say there is, there is always a line. There is always some secret sauce. Even if you have fully open HDL, you won't have documentation for the proprietary fab processes required to implement it in a way that performs. Even if the fab process were somehow fully open, you may not have public documentation on how to manufacture some of the required chemicals and raw materials available. And so on and so forth. The rabbit hole always goes deeper, and the lines between parts aren't entirely bright, and so making some kind of blanket statement that one is "fully open" is usually a marketing tactic and not actually truthful. That said, yes, Raptor stuff is pretty much as open as it gets, today, in the high-end space. They are pretty much the only modern platform which doesn't use blobs to train RAM on boot, for example. They are not perfect - for example, their motherboard schematics are only available to owners, so I assume they are not redistributable under an open hardware license.
- miguelr2201 6y agoOh, I see. That is definitely a lot deeper in the stack that I was thinking of. Thanks for the comment.