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Does there exist an RPI clone built around a SoC that is suitably open?

userbinator 1y ago
I believe most of these have public (or made-public) documentation available for their SoCs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Pi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Pi But for real openness, nothing beats an older x86 PC.
- ajb 1y ago
  Maybe they've improved, but banana pi/sinovoip used to ship images based on android kernels. Rockchip have a reputation of fully working with the open source community, though I can't personally say how well. Most other SoC vendors only do enough to get android going.
  - userbinator 1y ago
    Given that Android is basically the most popular "distro" of ARM Linux, that's not surprising. However, I was referring to the availability of documentation which for these Chinese SoCs is either officially released or soon leaked.
    - ajb 1y ago
      Leaked SoC documentation is a very long distance from having a fully working open ecosystem. Like, dozens of man-years -maybe hundreds. It would be a mistake to assume you can pick any of the sinovoip boards and get that. They use a number of SoC vendors with very different business models, and level of support for FOSS. Certainly there are some who make much less investment in maintaining an open ecosystem than RPI.
- justin66 1y ago
  x86 PCs need insecure and ordinarily impossible to replace blobs in order to boot. It's true that PC firmware doesn't seem to hurt open source people's feelings quite so much as it once did, but there's not a ton of logic to that.
  - userbinator 1y ago
    Coreboot has been around for over a decade. I'm not taking the "security" bait at all, especially when we're comparing a PC to an even less-explored platform which also requires binary blobs.
    - justin66 1y ago
      Unless things have changed significantly coreboot is an example of what I'm talking about - not a ton of x86 motherboard hardware is supported very well. "But for real openness, nothing beats an older x86 PC" just doesn't seem true at all. (but I'll look into coreboot. I'd get a kick out of trying it.)
kofta 1y ago
RPi-Pico2 uses the RP2350 which has two cores, one is a RISC-V core, and its source code was released on GitHub.
- IshKebab 1y ago
  That's a microcontroller.
- MartijnBraam 1y ago
  Both cores are actually ARM cores, but you can switch both cores to be RISC-V cores as well on boot.
  - xnzakg 1y ago
    Technically that's four cores, two of which that can be active at once
matheusmoreira 1y ago
Are there any good truly open SoCs out there? Seems like it's impossible to find even a single chip that doesn't require some proprietary blob to work, let alone good chips.
immibis 1y ago
Pine64 boards tend to be more open, but not fully, as they compromise between openness and price.

I believe most of these have public (or made-public) documentation available for their SoCs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Pi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Pi But for real openness, nothing beats an older x86 PC.

ajb 1y ago
Maybe they've improved, but banana pi/sinovoip used to ship images based on android kernels. Rockchip have a reputation of fully working with the open source community, though I can't personally say how well. Most other SoC vendors only do enough to get android going.
- userbinator 1y ago
  Given that Android is basically the most popular "distro" of ARM Linux, that's not surprising. However, I was referring to the availability of documentation which for these Chinese SoCs is either officially released or soon leaked.
  - ajb 1y ago
    Leaked SoC documentation is a very long distance from having a fully working open ecosystem. Like, dozens of man-years -maybe hundreds. It would be a mistake to assume you can pick any of the sinovoip boards and get that. They use a number of SoC vendors with very different business models, and level of support for FOSS. Certainly there are some who make much less investment in maintaining an open ecosystem than RPI.
justin66 1y ago
x86 PCs need insecure and ordinarily impossible to replace blobs in order to boot. It's true that PC firmware doesn't seem to hurt open source people's feelings quite so much as it once did, but there's not a ton of logic to that.
- userbinator 1y ago
  Coreboot has been around for over a decade. I'm not taking the "security" bait at all, especially when we're comparing a PC to an even less-explored platform which also requires binary blobs.
  - justin66 1y ago
    Unless things have changed significantly coreboot is an example of what I'm talking about - not a ton of x86 motherboard hardware is supported very well. "But for real openness, nothing beats an older x86 PC" just doesn't seem true at all. (but I'll look into coreboot. I'd get a kick out of trying it.)

kofta 1y ago

RPi-Pico2 uses the RP2350 which has two cores, one is a RISC-V core, and its source code was released on GitHub.

IshKebab 1y ago
That's a microcontroller.
MartijnBraam 1y ago
Both cores are actually ARM cores, but you can switch both cores to be RISC-V cores as well on boot.
- xnzakg 1y ago
  Technically that's four cores, two of which that can be active at once

matheusmoreira 1y ago

Are there any good truly open SoCs out there? Seems like it's impossible to find even a single chip that doesn't require some proprietary blob to work, let alone good chips.

immibis 1y ago

Pine64 boards tend to be more open, but not fully, as they compromise between openness and price.