Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Freedom and security issues on x86 platforms

mail.fsfeurope.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 282 posts

Re: Freedom and security issues on x86 platforms

#101

Post by nickpsecurity »

loeg wrote: post #59
nickpsecurity wrote: post #42

Unbelievable. Yet again, we have a post on finding x86 alternative that's most FOSS friendly. Yet again, the author is unaware of or ignores the only architecture that's open, has GPL cores, and an ecosystem. That's SPARC. Oracle's T1 and T2 cores are open-source to study. More appropriately, Cobham-Gaisler's Leon3 HW is dual-licensed under GPL and commercial. The Leon4 is 4-cores. SPARC ISA is open. Open Firmware ex…

All existing SPARC hardware is very old at this point and has horrible energy efficiency and poor performance compared to the other options, including POWER8 and ARM.

This is possible. I wonder how much of that is its design/I.P. and how much is what process node it's currently on? A port of proven I.P. with existing ecosystem to 28-65nm that ARM and RISC-V are using might fix a lot of that.

Re: Freedom and security issues on x86 platforms

#102

Post by jsmthrowaway »

mmebane wrote: post #65
Galanwe wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was at FOSDEM this year (2016) and there was a talk from the leader of LibreBoot. Honestly, his talk on the state of the project was very bitter. He literally said that there is absolutely no hope that LibreBoot will ever be able to cope with ME, and that the fight is over since 2008. As much as I would absolutely love to be able to run a free firmware, unless there is a major change/outsider in the hardware manufa…

I've been using a Raspberry Pi 3 for the past week, and have been pleasantly surprised by the performance. It's no speed demon, to be sure, but it's good enough for all my basic tasks. I wish there were a general "open computing" branch of the Raspberry Pi Foundation that would produce a $50-$100 "pro" version with more RAM and faster bus+peripherals.

You cannot boot RPi without proprietary blobs, so it's not what you're looking for (it sounds like?).

Re: Freedom and security issues on x86 platforms

#103

Post by rdtsc »

> POWER is the only architecture currently competitive with Intel in terms of raw performance, and boots using a fully FOSS firmware with no DRM antifeatures embedded.

That's pretty cool. This combined with some benchmarks I saw for server workload on POWER8 will hopefully revive some interest in the platform.

Re: Freedom and security issues on x86 platforms

#104

Post by simcop2387 »

BrainInAJar wrote: post #72
nickpsecurity wrote: post #42

Unbelievable. Yet again, we have a post on finding x86 alternative that's most FOSS friendly. Yet again, the author is unaware of or ignores the only architecture that's open, has GPL cores, and an ecosystem. That's SPARC. Oracle's T1 and T2 cores are open-source to study. More appropriately, Cobham-Gaisler's Leon3 HW is dual-licensed under GPL and commercial. The Leon4 is 4-cores. SPARC ISA is open. Open Firmware ex…

Not to mention that ARM's ABI is hidden behind a paid NDA. ARM is even less open than x86

I'm not sure I know what you mean by ABI here? ABI in this case to me would mean Application Binary Interface, IE the C ABI that's defined by the platform and not the processor.

Re: Freedom and security issues on x86 platforms

#105

Post by PeCaN »

forty wrote: post #25

What about VIA x86 CPUs? http://www.viatech.com/en/silicon/processors/ Do they implement some "secure boot"-like features?

To the best of my knowledge, VIA CPUs have no secure boot, management engine, or any other proprietary secondary hardware.

Coreboot supports many VIA CPUs and motherboards[1], though it's unclear if it uses any binary blobs the FSF seems alright with VIA Technologies and apparently they're cooperative with open-source BIOS[2].

1. https://www.coreboot.org/Supported_Motherboards

2. https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/supportlinuxbios.html

Re: Freedom and security issues on x86 platforms

#106

Post by nickpsecurity »

kristoffer wrote: post #71
nickpsecurity wrote: post #42

Unbelievable. Yet again, we have a post on finding x86 alternative that's most FOSS friendly. Yet again, the author is unaware of or ignores the only architecture that's open, has GPL cores, and an ecosystem. That's SPARC. Oracle's T1 and T2 cores are open-source to study. More appropriately, Cobham-Gaisler's Leon3 HW is dual-licensed under GPL and commercial. The Leon4 is 4-cores. SPARC ISA is open. Open Firmware ex…

I thought it was pretty bad as well ... But the SPARCs you mention have their drawbacks. LEON is not that competetive in the high end (in order single issue, low clock freq) and T1/T2 are only cores (i.e. without interesting "uncore" stuff) and not that good as general purpose "desktop like" CPU. I have much higher hopes for RISC-V, the community is really booming and the architecture is better than SPARC. I say this…

"But the SPARCs you mention have their drawbacks. LEON is not that competetive in the high end (in order single issue, low clock freq) and T1/T2 are only cores (i.e. without interesting "uncore" stuff) and not that good as general purpose "desktop like" CPU."

There's definitely drawbacks. I've just not even seen interest in embedded sector of FOSS for SPARC even with open cores. I wouldn't argue stuff like Leon4 in its current form is suitable for replacing a Core Duo or anything. Yet, that it's suitable for many apps but ignored for all apps by FOSS in favor of proprietary MCU's/CPU's might reveal a problem on their side.

Far as RISC-V, the community is booming and I have high hopes for them. Maybe they'll make something. My recommendation was to create Pi-like board with RISC-V SOC by licensing Leon3 or Leon4, replacing SPARC components with RISC-V, and getting the rest w/out effort. I think we would anyway given it's designed for easy configuration/modification. In parallel, continue developing clean-slate replacements. Gives us a rich, interim product to use with full FOSS down the line. What you think of that idea?

Re: Freedom and security issues on x86 platforms

#107

Post by CyberDildonics »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #42

Unbelievable. Yet again, we have a post on finding x86 alternative that's most FOSS friendly. Yet again, the author is unaware of or ignores the only architecture that's open, has GPL cores, and an ecosystem. That's SPARC. Oracle's T1 and T2 cores are open-source to study. More appropriately, Cobham-Gaisler's Leon3 HW is dual-licensed under GPL and commercial. The Leon4 is 4-cores. SPARC ISA is open. Open Firmware ex…

To be fair, Oracle winding up with the most open hardware is such an outlier it would be like checking if Stephen Hawking won the Boston marathon.

Re: Freedom and security issues on x86 platforms

#108

Post by lasermike026 »

Dependence on a few companies to design and make processors will not work in the long term. Open source processor design that can be manufactured by anyone is the way out of this problem. Even if this never happens the attempt to go there is enough to make the large companies involved with cpus beg and serve.

Re: Freedom and security issues on x86 platforms

#110

Post by Symmetry »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #99
jclulow wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, Oracle has not made any SPARC intellectual property available since the acquisition of Sun. The T1 and T2 lines were emphatically Sun-era products.

They stay on Slashdot and in my news feed. Here's a few from Oracle and one from Fujitsu: Oracle T4 http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/sparc-t4-announc... Oracle M6 http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/sparc-m6/index.h... Oracle M7 https://blogs.oracle.com/rajadurai/entry/sparc_m7_chip_32_co... Fujitsu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC64_VI

Yes, new SPACE processors are coming out. The chips are being made available but the intellectual property isn't.
Post reply on HN