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What's even more confusing is their choice of parts. The NXP QorIQ line is designed for use in networking hardware, not in mobile devices -- it has limited powe

What's even more confusing is their choice of parts. The NXP QorIQ line is designed for use in networking hardware, not in mobile devices -- it has limited power management functionality, and, as best I was able to tell when I looked into this last year [2], has idle power consumption somewhere around 7W, ramping up to 20W under load. It's not especially fast, either -- it's only got four cores at 1.8 GHz. Most new cell phones will run rings around it. My best guess is that they somehow decided on the PowerPC architecture before evaluating what parts were available, and realized too late that nobody makes mobile PowerPC SoCs... [1]: https://www.nxp.com/products/processors-and-microcontrollers/power-architecture/qoriq-communication-processors/t-series/qoriq-t2080-and-t2081-multicore-communications-processors:T2080 https://www.nxp.com/products/processors-and-microcontrollers... [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24188796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24188796

nine_k 5y ago
Indeed, they must have decided on the Power architecture first, because it's available and can run without proprietary binary blobs. That was the key consideration, I think. Otherwise picking an Intel or AMD part would be much more efficient from many angles.
- duskwuff 5y ago
  > because it's available and can run without proprietary binary blobs Which isn't even necessarily true. The POWER architecture is just an ISA. It doesn't specify anything about how the rest of the system works. (The POWER Architecture Platform does exist, but, as far as I know, it's only used in IBM's POWER servers.) Conversely, it's hardly as though POWER is the only architecture this is true of. Coincidentally, NXP also sells a line of ARM SoCs (the i.MX line) which can be used in a blob-free mode, and there are already several open hardware laptops built around those parts!
eqvinox 5y ago
Fully agree, but at the same time I'm hard pressed to think of an alternative that doesn't need binary blobs to bring up & is better in terms of power usage / efficiency. Most modern chips really can't initialize themselves anymore without feeding them some blob, most frequently for DDR controller calibration but also sometimes SERDES bits. That said I'm not sure why this should be treated harsher than if the same code were burned into a mask ROM on the chip. The latter case would be acceptable for "blob-free open hardware enthusiasts". It's a rather arbitrary distinction IMHO. add.P.S.: my personal goal would be a system where I control 100% of all running code starting at the bootloader. Most of these initialization blobs are one-shots, e.g. push the appropriate electronic parameters into some high-speed analog block. But this means no Intel ME & no AMD PSP, please. It also means no "power management" coprocessor (reasonably common on ARM SoCs), not even due to openness or trust concerns but rather because I've been bitten by bugs in those… :(
numpad0 5y ago
The team is also looking for donations to obtain 55W MXM-A cards. It would be nice to have a proper GPU, but is there a reason why it can't be a random SXGA-compatible framebuffer or some FPGA IPs? Is this laptop being designed for some specific task?

nine_k 5y ago

Indeed, they must have decided on the Power architecture first, because it's available and can run without proprietary binary blobs. That was the key consideration, I think. Otherwise picking an Intel or AMD part would be much more efficient from many angles.

duskwuff 5y ago
> because it's available and can run without proprietary binary blobs Which isn't even necessarily true. The POWER architecture is just an ISA. It doesn't specify anything about how the rest of the system works. (The POWER Architecture Platform does exist, but, as far as I know, it's only used in IBM's POWER servers.) Conversely, it's hardly as though POWER is the only architecture this is true of. Coincidentally, NXP also sells a line of ARM SoCs (the i.MX line) which can be used in a blob-free mode, and there are already several open hardware laptops built around those parts!

eqvinox 5y ago

Fully agree, but at the same time I'm hard pressed to think of an alternative that doesn't need binary blobs to bring up & is better in terms of power usage / efficiency. Most modern chips really can't initialize themselves anymore without feeding them some blob, most frequently for DDR controller calibration but also sometimes SERDES bits. That said I'm not sure why this should be treated harsher than if the same code were burned into a mask ROM on the chip. The latter case would be acceptable for "blob-free open hardware enthusiasts". It's a rather arbitrary distinction IMHO. add.P.S.: my personal goal would be a system where I control 100% of all running code starting at the bootloader. Most of these initialization blobs are one-shots, e.g. push the appropriate electronic parameters into some high-speed analog block. But this means no Intel ME & no AMD PSP, please. It also means no "power management" coprocessor (reasonably common on ARM SoCs), not even due to openness or trust concerns but rather because I've been bitten by bugs in those… :(

numpad0 5y ago

The team is also looking for donations to obtain 55W MXM-A cards. It would be nice to have a proper GPU, but is there a reason why it can't be a random SXGA-compatible framebuffer or some FPGA IPs? Is this laptop being designed for some specific task?