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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

#31

Post by _ph_ »

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…

I wouldn't think that PowerPC is ill suited for reasonably low power designs. It is a RISC chip after all. And up to and including the G4, they ran very well in the Apple laptops. Only the IBM-made G5 was a very hot beast, perhaps because it pushed the cpu frequency beyond the comfort zone for its process in the attempt to keep up with Intel. But a fresh design with a modern process could yield very low power and still well performing chips. Even the Itanium, which had a reputation for being power-hungry probably would be efficient enough to be used in a smart phone, if ported to the TSMC 7nm technology.

Re: GNU/Linux Open Hardware PowerPC Notebook Project

#32

Post by userbinator »

johnklos wrote: post #12
ronsor wrote: post #4

I hope it's not big endian. A lot of modern software now just expects everything to be little endian, and won't work properly.

Yeah! Let's not fix the software and the bad assumptions some programmers make - let's all just do what's simplest for the bad programmers. What could go wrong? ;) Seriously, there's zero reason why endianness should matter in code. All good code compiles and runs on whatever endian system you want. If it doesn't, then it's buggy and broken and should be fixed, and whoever wrote it should be ashamed.

Big endian is backwards. Little endian is logical and should've been the only choice from the beginning.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9451284

The only real BE holdouts are networking hardware and mainframes.

(In LE, increasing offsets are increasing weight, just like the commonly accepted bit numbering. In BE, they're decreasing and length-dependent.)

Re: GNU/Linux Open Hardware PowerPC Notebook Project

#33

Post by flatiron »

autoliteInline wrote: post #18
flatiron wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fpgas are very unsuitable general purpose computers. De10 nano is a very beefy fpga and can barely play doom acting like a general purpose 486 and lacks a fpga

Oh well, I figured that a PowerPC Notebook was for hobbyists. What I would find fascinating is to think about languages and OSs for FPGA and try to break loose from the utterly boring C/Unix/68k,x86,MIPS,blah paradigm. Having something turnkey with attachment to various ports and a display would be kind of cool. Maybe that exists already. I worked on a project with a processor-on-an-FPGA and while it wasn't fast, the…

Ppc notebook is a thing because ppc has been “open sourced” so you can just make ppc chips using great documentation with nobody knocking on your door. As a technology it’s dead as a door nail but it’s free as speech.

Re: GNU/Linux Open Hardware PowerPC Notebook Project

#34

Post by dragontamer »

autoliteInline wrote: post #8
pigeons wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Open hardware.

I figure someone might as well go whole-hog on that and build a PC with just a big ol' FPGA.

FPGAs are incredibly closed, outside of Lattice Semiconductor's tiny FPGAs (unsuitable for computers). In all practicality for "openness", any open-source advocate should rather use Intel/AMD than Xilinx/Altera.

Closed-source synthesizers, closed source bootup, closed source loaders, etc. etc. You're pretty much trusting the FPGA software more than any CPU.

Re: GNU/Linux Open Hardware PowerPC Notebook Project

#35

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

jayd16 wrote: post #16
johnklos wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah! Let's not fix the software and the bad assumptions some programmers make - let's all just do what's simplest for the bad programmers. What could go wrong? ;) Seriously, there's zero reason why endianness should matter in code. All good code compiles and runs on whatever endian system you want. If it doesn't, then it's buggy and broken and should be fixed, and whoever wrote it should be ashamed.

>Seriously, there's zero reason why endianness should matter in code How about wanting to share binary blobs between architectures without spending the effort to marshal things.

How would binary blobs work on a different architecture regardless of endian-ness?

Re: GNU/Linux Open Hardware PowerPC Notebook Project

#36

Post by tcmart14 »

neilv wrote: post #26
guerrilla wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I don't want to put words in the mouth of who you are responding to, but here would be my assumption. PPC is probably in a better position for mass distribution in the short term. Where as RISC-V still has some time to go before we can get there at modern performance in a package that goes in consumer hardware. Also, just have more architectures means more possibilities of design decisions and more choice, which is always good.

Re: GNU/Linux Open Hardware PowerPC Notebook Project

#37

Post by zdw »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #35
jayd16 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Seriously, there's zero reason why endianness should matter in code How about wanting to share binary blobs between architectures without spending the effort to marshal things.

How would binary blobs work on a different architecture regardless of endian-ness?

htonl and ntohl would like a word.

Re: GNU/Linux Open Hardware PowerPC Notebook Project

#39

Post by kitsunesoba »

It's not at all the market this is aimed at, but movement in the direction of obtainably-priced new PPC hardware is exciting to me because it means that there's new hardware that can run classic Mac OS closer to the metal — potentially very close with a thin hypervisor layer that bridges the gap between what Mac OS is expecting and how the hardware actually is.

As for why it's exciting, emulation of classic Macs still has large holes (e.g. GPUs aren't emulated well enough to support 3D games) and is generally buggy, which will be a problem when all the old PPC Macs have broken beyond repair. A vast amount of unique software will be rendered not practically usable. There's also just a little bit of something lost in emulation… all the bits of added latency and quirks pile up to dampen the positive aspects of those old systems.

Re: GNU/Linux Open Hardware PowerPC Notebook Project

#40

Post by duskwuff »

dragontamer wrote: post #34
autoliteInline wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I figure someone might as well go whole-hog on that and build a PC with just a big ol' FPGA.

FPGAs are incredibly closed, outside of Lattice Semiconductor's tiny FPGAs (unsuitable for computers). In all practicality for "openness", any open-source advocate should rather use Intel/AMD than Xilinx/Altera. Closed-source synthesizers, closed source bootup, closed source loaders, etc. etc. You're pretty much trusting the FPGA software more than any CPU.

> In all practicality for "openness", any open-source advocate should rather use Intel/AMD than Xilinx/Altera.

That's an ironic comparison to make -- Intel bought Altera in 2015, and AMD is in the process of acquiring Xilinx.

Between the two, though, there's been a lot more work done on open toolchains for Xilinx FPGAs.

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