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It's unclear to me if they're using the FPGA only for rapid-prototying and the end-user version will ship with an ASIC, or if the end-user version will still co
by tremon 5y ago
It's unclear to me if they're using the FPGA only for rapid-prototying and the end-user version will ship with an ASIC, or if the end-user version will still contain the FPGA. And if the latter, whether the FPGA will be user-programmable.
Looks cool, but I'm pretty sure that as an end user I would not feel comfortable reprogramming the board management controller of a $5000 dollar piece of equipment.
- p_l 5y agoThe end product will be still FPGA and will be end-user programmable. This is a core differentiator for some of Raptor's client base, and I do not mean only individual RYF hardware fans - the design means that the system is also fully auditable by owners including ability to rebuild all firmware images from scratch. The FPGA on the motherboard which handles some of the glue logic is also user programmable this way.
- sennight 5y ago> ...I'm pretty sure that as an end user I would not feel comfortable... The fact that you have access to all the information you need to do the job should alleviate any concern. It is a night and day difference from blindly hacking on hardware from a hostile manufacturer. Did you actually mean "I don't want to"?
- tw04 5y ago>Looks cool, but I'm pretty sure that as an end user I would not feel comfortable reprogramming the board management controller of a $5000 dollar piece of equipment. I don't think the point is that they expect you to start tearing into the code, it's more so that you can feel comfortable that if you have any questions at all about the code running on it, you can rebuild from source and reflash to verify yourself. I also may be underselling the ability of this to harm your system, but I'm not sure what you'd possibly do that wouldn't be reversible. Bricking the BMC itself means replacing the BMC (although if you can flash it I think it'd be difficult to COMPLETELY brick) - maybe a motherboard if they happen to fully integrate it but that doesn't look like the plan at this point looking at the size of the add-on board.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago> Looks cool, but I'm pretty sure that as an end user I would not feel comfortable reprogramming the board management controller of a $5000 dollar piece of equipment. Why would it be any different than flashing a firmware image to a $5000 box?
- rbanffy 5y agoAt least here you can snap out the BMC and replace it with one fresh out of the box. It'd not be so easy with one integrated into the motherboard.