3 ms·
Many, myself included, would gladly take a major hit in battery life if it means having a machine we can actually trust. Trust means no ME backdoors, no random
by lrvick 5y ago
Many, myself included, would gladly take a major hit in battery life if it means having a machine we can actually trust.
Trust means no ME backdoors, no random blobs which can be supply chain attack vectors.
Freedom means I can do anything I want to the software and firmware and repair anything as needed long term without the consent of a corporation that has a financial interest in seeing their hardware go to a landfill in 2 years so people buy the latest.
- neilv 5y agoHow does the open/libre/trustworthy potential of PPC and Power products compare with RISC-V? Current, and near future? This is something I've been wondering. It's started looking like there will be a lot more hardware options based on RISC-V. Thus far, PPC/Power has had better libre options due to: https://www.raptorcs.com/ https://www.raptorcs.com/ I hope there will be healthy competition from open/libre/trustworthy and performant RISC-V boards.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- guerrilla 5y ago> open/libre/trustworthy potential It's not just potential but actual: Those Raptor workstations and servers already have coreboot firmware and run Linux (and whatever BSDs run on PPC today.)
- neilv 5y agoAgreed for current, over recent years. But what about near-future, with multiple sources of performant RISC-V CPUs? And will a larger variety of boards follow, possibly including very libre ones like Raptor does for Power?
- tcmart14 5y agoI don't want to put words in the mouth of who you are responding to, but here would be my assumption. PPC is probably in a better position for mass distribution in the short term. Where as RISC-V still has some time to go before we can get there at modern performance in a package that goes in consumer hardware. Also, just have more architectures means more possibilities of design decisions and more choice, which is always good.
- nine_k 5y agoCould you please point at a source of currently available performant RISC-V CPUs, something comparable to Intel's lower-end mobile chips like, say, Intel i3 from 5-7 years ago? I used to think that current RISC-V offers are approximately in the ARM A57 league.
- pabs3 5y agoUnfortunately with POWER10, a couple of blobs are required, so Raptor are sticking to the older POWER9 for now.
- guerrilla 5y agoI saw, I saw. I hope that changes. Maybe someone can reverse it, or pressure IBM (ha!)