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GNU/Linux Open Hardware PowerPC Notebook Project

powerpc-notebook.org

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Re: GNU/Linux Open Hardware PowerPC Notebook Project

#21

Post by neilv »

lrvick wrote: post #10
quanticle wrote: post #2

Using PPC in a laptop form factor is a really confusing choice, given that Apple abandoned PPC [1] in their laptops for Intel because they judged that there was no way that IBM was ever going to come out with a PPC chip that was ever going to be as power efficient as the comparable Intel parts. Their "Why PPC" page [2] makes no mention of power or thermal efficiency, and just states that PowerPC is better because the…

Many, myself included, would gladly take a major hit in battery life if it means having a machine we can actually trust. Trust means no ME backdoors, no random blobs which can be supply chain attack vectors. Freedom means I can do anything I want to the software and firmware and repair anything as needed long term without the consent of a corporation that has a financial interest in seeing their hardware go to a land…

How does the open/libre/trustworthy potential of PPC and Power products compare with RISC-V? Current, and near future?

This is something I've been wondering. It's started looking like there will be a lot more hardware options based on RISC-V. Thus far, PPC/Power has had better libre options due to: https://www.raptorcs.com/ I hope there will be healthy competition from open/libre/trustworthy and performant RISC-V boards.

Re: GNU/Linux Open Hardware PowerPC Notebook Project

#22

Post by monocasa »

spijdar wrote: post #20
monocasa wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PowerPC has been settling on powerpc64le lately for that reason. Is be surprised if little endian isn't at least an option, if not the default.

Unfortunately the SoC they've chosen, while technically supporting little endian, doesn't include the VMX extensions to the ISA IIRC, which all (?) distros require as they generally assume ppc64le = POWER8 or higher, which include VMX. There may be other caveats, but at the very least, you'd need a custom distro to get LE working on it, with special build flags used to restrict it to Altivec instructions.

Everything I'm looking at says that the T2080 SoC they've chosen contains e6500 CPU cores, which contain VMX units (also known as AltiVec). Unless you're talking about later additions to the VMX ISA, and not the VMX unit wholesale.

I'm also seeing the e6500 listed as Power 2.06 compliant, just the same as POWER8.

AltiVec is just NXP's (nee Freescale's nee Motorola's) trademark for VMX just like Velocity Engine is Apple's trademark.

Re: GNU/Linux Open Hardware PowerPC Notebook Project

#23

Post by [deleted] »

neilv wrote: post #21
lrvick wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many, myself included, would gladly take a major hit in battery life if it means having a machine we can actually trust. Trust means no ME backdoors, no random blobs which can be supply chain attack vectors. Freedom means I can do anything I want to the software and firmware and repair anything as needed long term without the consent of a corporation that has a financial interest in seeing their hardware go to a land…

How does the open/libre/trustworthy potential of PPC and Power products compare with RISC-V? Current, and near future? This is something I've been wondering. It's started looking like there will be a lot more hardware options based on RISC-V. Thus far, PPC/Power has had better libre options due to: https://www.raptorcs.com/ I hope there will be healthy competition from open/libre/trustworthy and performant RISC-V boa…

[deleted]

Re: GNU/Linux Open Hardware PowerPC Notebook Project

#24

Post by _zzaw »

Y_Y wrote: post #5

That website is a trainwreck on mobile firefox. Two screen-covering popups and wrong language detection.

Agreed. They’ve disabled reader mode, too. Took one look at that mess and decided I didn’t care enough to even try tapping the deliberately minuscule X buttons.

I’m at the point where I am so done with disrespectful websites that I’m willing to forgo information I’d otherwise care about just so I don’t have to engage with them.

Re: GNU/Linux Open Hardware PowerPC Notebook Project

#25

Post by guerrilla »

neilv wrote: post #21
lrvick wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many, myself included, would gladly take a major hit in battery life if it means having a machine we can actually trust. Trust means no ME backdoors, no random blobs which can be supply chain attack vectors. Freedom means I can do anything I want to the software and firmware and repair anything as needed long term without the consent of a corporation that has a financial interest in seeing their hardware go to a land…

How does the open/libre/trustworthy potential of PPC and Power products compare with RISC-V? Current, and near future? This is something I've been wondering. It's started looking like there will be a lot more hardware options based on RISC-V. Thus far, PPC/Power has had better libre options due to: https://www.raptorcs.com/ I hope there will be healthy competition from open/libre/trustworthy and performant RISC-V boa…

> open/libre/trustworthy potential

It's not just potential but actual: Those Raptor workstations and servers already have coreboot firmware and run Linux (and whatever BSDs run on PPC today.)

Re: GNU/Linux Open Hardware PowerPC Notebook Project

#26

Post by neilv »

guerrilla wrote: post #25
neilv wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the open/libre/trustworthy potential of PPC and Power products compare with RISC-V? Current, and near future? This is something I've been wondering. It's started looking like there will be a lot more hardware options based on RISC-V. Thus far, PPC/Power has had better libre options due to: https://www.raptorcs.com/ I hope there will be healthy competition from open/libre/trustworthy and performant RISC-V boa…

> open/libre/trustworthy potential It's not just potential but actual: Those Raptor workstations and servers already have coreboot firmware and run Linux (and whatever BSDs run on PPC today.)

Agreed for current, over recent years. But what about near-future, with multiple sources of performant RISC-V CPUs? And will a larger variety of boards follow, possibly including very libre ones like Raptor does for Power?

Re: GNU/Linux Open Hardware PowerPC Notebook Project

#28

Post by spijdar »

monocasa wrote: post #22
spijdar wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately the SoC they've chosen, while technically supporting little endian, doesn't include the VMX extensions to the ISA IIRC, which all (?) distros require as they generally assume ppc64le = POWER8 or higher, which include VMX. There may be other caveats, but at the very least, you'd need a custom distro to get LE working on it, with special build flags used to restrict it to Altivec instructions.

Everything I'm looking at says that the T2080 SoC they've chosen contains e6500 CPU cores, which contain VMX units (also known as AltiVec). Unless you're talking about later additions to the VMX ISA, and not the VMX unit wholesale. I'm also seeing the e6500 listed as Power 2.06 compliant, just the same as POWER8. AltiVec is just NXP's (nee Freescale's nee Motorola's) trademark for VMX just like Velocity Engine is App…

I was mistaken, but the end result is the same. It's VSX that's POWER7 and higher specific, which is an extension of VMX/Altivec.

The reality is actually worse -- Altivec/VMX doesn't work at all in little-endian on the e6500. https://www.nxp.com/files-static/training/doc/ftf/2014/FTF-N... (search for "big-endian")

So an LE distro for the e6500 would have to built with Altivec support disabled.

(The powerpc notebook guys mention this in their FAQ, but sort of vaguely says that modern distros require "some functionality" not provided by the e6500 https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/faq/)

Re: GNU/Linux Open Hardware PowerPC Notebook Project

#29

Post by duskwuff »

quanticle wrote: post #2

Using PPC in a laptop form factor is a really confusing choice, given that Apple abandoned PPC [1] in their laptops for Intel because they judged that there was no way that IBM was ever going to come out with a PPC chip that was ever going to be as power efficient as the comparable Intel parts. Their "Why PPC" page [2] makes no mention of power or thermal efficiency, and just states that PowerPC is better because the…

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...

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24188796

Re: GNU/Linux Open Hardware PowerPC Notebook Project

#30

Post by duskwuff »

Y_Y wrote: post #5

That website is a trainwreck on mobile firefox. Two screen-covering popups and wrong language detection.

Three popups on desktop, one of which collapses into a large, persistent "chat" bubble in the upper left of the window.

Not to judge a book by its cover, but this certainly doesn't speak well for the level of care put into this project.

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