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Talos II

raptorcs.com

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Re: Talos II

#91

Post by fao_ »

samstave wrote: post #44
vectorEQ wrote: post #6

Talos™ II drives the state of the art of secure computing forward. Talos™ II gives you — and only you — full control of your machine's security. Rest assured knowing that only your authorized software and firmware are running via POWER9's secure boot features. Don't trust us? Look at the secure boot sources yourself — and modify them as you wish. That's the power of Talos™ II. That is fkin nice to be honest. There is…

I just learned about laptops from a Bay Area company yesterday: purism HTTPS://puri.sm Coreboot based laptops...

See also: https://minifree.org/

Their laptops have been gutted of the Intel Management Engine/AMD PSP, they ship with coreboot on them, and (I think) they're without binary blobs(?).

Re: Talos II

#92

Post by zymhan »

CrystalGamma wrote: post #78
hsivonen wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of network effects of ISA-specific optimizations, it's problematic that not only is the workstation so expensive but POWER8/9 cloud availability seems to be only for orgs that buy a lot of compute time. If you are a dev who isn't being paid by e.g. IBM or Red Hat to work on ppc64le stuff, it seems hard to get access to running your code on real hardware and running on qemu doesn't really make sense for optim…

They're already scaling down … in the POWER8 Talos campaign, the cheapest CPU option was something like $1300, the CPU they're offering here is only $300. And the board, because you don't need expensive memory buffer chips anymore, is almost half the price as then.

Yeah previously it was over $4,000 for the board and CPU, this is nearly half the price.

If they can keep this up, I could actually fork over the money for the 3rd gen.

Re: Talos II

#93

Post by JohnZi »

CrystalGamma wrote: post #79
qubex wrote: post #38

Despite the high cost (when compared to 'comparable' x86_64 hardware) I am very excited by this. However I'm concerned by desktop Linux support and graphics driver support. It would be really miserable to get this kind of machine and then have a lacklustre desktop experience (though I'd be using it as a high-horsepower workstation, it would need to be able to dump computations onto the GPU and use ordinary free produ…

Given that they're selling systems with AMD cards in them, I would imagine that AMDGPU/RadeonSI at least would very well.

They had a video of playing Unreal Tournament (the new one) on a Talos 1 with a AMD card.

As long as a card with Open Source driver support gets used it should work mostly fine. Back then they need a 4line patch to play ut4.

Re: Talos II

#94

Post by vaskas »

yellowapple wrote: post #73
arca_vorago wrote: post #10

I have been keeping an eye on Raptor and Talos for a while now, and it's super exciting to see another cpu-platform with security and openess in mind. As a GNU+Linux guy, has anyone had any experience with GNU+Linux on the Power platform? What kind of differences could I expect. I've been itching to build a new AMD Naples 64 core (2x cpu) server, but I have to admit I'm tempted to just do AMD Ryzen for my upcoming de…

Most things should be similar. Proprietary drivers (like for graphics cards) obviously won't work (though the firmware should, I reckon, since that's independent of the host CPU). Proprietary software in general probably won't work unless you can convince the vendor to ship a POWER build. Even some FOSS might not work fully (or even at all) if it relies too much on specific architectures (in particular, I know V8 - a…

Just curious, what do you use OpenBSD on macppc for, and which version?

Debian PowerPC version has a few bugs but at least the desktop package selection has been decent, shame that the port lost the official status.

Re: Talos II

#95

Post by yellowapple »

vaskas wrote: post #94
yellowapple wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most things should be similar. Proprietary drivers (like for graphics cards) obviously won't work (though the firmware should, I reckon, since that's independent of the host CPU). Proprietary software in general probably won't work unless you can convince the vendor to ship a POWER build. Even some FOSS might not work fully (or even at all) if it relies too much on specific architectures (in particular, I know V8 - a…

Just curious, what do you use OpenBSD on macppc for, and which version? Debian PowerPC version has a few bugs but at least the desktop package selection has been decent, shame that the port lost the official status.

I have a PowerBook G4 that was at one point a daily driver, plus an eMac that was running at one point but needs a new hard drive; those were/are both in desktop roles. I also have a Power Mac G5 and an XServe G5 in server roles. All of them have OpenBSD 5.9 installed (except the eMac, which had OpenBSD 6.0 installed before the hard drive failed).

The XServe and Power Mac are in storage right now, but I'd like to get the Powerbook upgraded to 6.1 eventually (I want to stick full-disk encryption on it, too, so I'll probably just blow away the existing install and start from scratch).

Re: Talos II

#96

Post by PeCaN »

krylon wrote: post #8
rwmj wrote: post #5

Prices starting at $4,750 [sic]: https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/TL2WK2/purchase.html

That price does not include RAM or a GPU. Even a bare bones motherboard costs more than $2,000. I have no doubt this an awesome machine, but that price puts it outside my budget range. :(

That's par for the course for a workstation. Actually on the affordable end, which is surprising given that it's using POWER9 which I figured would be expensive (by virtue of not being x86).

Re: Talos II

#97

Post by [deleted] »

krylon wrote: post #8
rwmj wrote: post #5

Prices starting at $4,750 [sic]: https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/TL2WK2/purchase.html

That price does not include RAM or a GPU. Even a bare bones motherboard costs more than $2,000. I have no doubt this an awesome machine, but that price puts it outside my budget range. :(

[deleted]

Re: Talos II

#98

Post by rekado »

fao_ wrote: post #91
samstave wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just learned about laptops from a Bay Area company yesterday: purism HTTPS://puri.sm Coreboot based laptops...

See also: https://minifree.org/ Their laptops have been gutted of the Intel Management Engine/AMD PSP, they ship with coreboot on them, and (I think) they're without binary blobs(?).

Yes, they are without blobs. They come with Libreboot, a coreboot distribution without blobs, not vanilla coreboot.

Similar notebooks with Libreboot are offered by vikings.net, tehnoetic.com, and zerocat.de; minifree.org is the business of Libreboot's main developer and former lead, so buying from them directly supports development of Libreboot.

Re: Talos II

#99

Post by walterbell »

wang_li wrote: post #83
olympus wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a rather strong way of putting it, but yes, you should assume that every device you use can be penetrated by a sufficiently advanced and motivated actor. You should also be comfortable with the fact that state level actors have been recording information so that they can reach into your past should you ever become a problem with them. In that mindset, you have to create a security environment such that the tru…

The lazy part of me thinks that using a POWER based system as my desktop for internet related activities provides one of the best protections from shitty, buggy software. No one's exploit is going to include POWER based shellcode to go along with their vulnerability. My browser might crash, but that x86 shell code isn't going do to shit.

Linux on Mac Mini G4 (PowerPC): http://www.sowerbutts.com/linux-mac-mini/#introduction

Re: Talos II

#100

Post by milcron »

olympus wrote: post #56
samstave wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just learned about laptops from a Bay Area company yesterday: purism HTTPS://puri.sm Coreboot based laptops...

The main criticism against Purism laptops is that they still contain proprietary blobs (from Intel) in the coreboot payload. We have no way of knowing what's in those blobs. Purism tries to be free, and is a step up from other vendors, but doesn't go far enough for some people.

They are a lot better since investing in the me_cleaner project. Not all of the management engine can be removed, but it can be neutered (most of the binary deleted, including the network stack).

I used to think Purism was a sham, but now that the ME can be neutered I find it an acceptable compromise.

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