21–30 of 75 posts
IBM had the opportunity of being the royalty-free ISA that RISC-V is. Or even release the cores "IP". They squandered it.
"squandered [..] the opportunity of being the royalty-free ISA" Last time I checked, IBM was a business. I don't think losing an "opportunity" to give away the ISA for free sounds like a loss to them.
https://openpowerfoundation.org/the-next-step-in-the-openpow...
Don't forget that POWER10 is no longer ryf-certifiable. Of course the ryf certification may be questionable but it is an established bar, POWER9 was able to cross it, POWER10 probably won't: https://www.talospace.com/2020/08/power10-sounds-really-grea... https://twitter.com/RaptorCompSys/status/1435510763402244105...
RYF allows various "tricks" of hiding blobs, so it is not what I'd use as the benchmark here. Raptor's standards are likely higher than what RYF would require...
I've heard people saying things like "even a windows device could be ryf-certified if it was in ROM", but I see nothing even close to this when I look at currently ryf-certified devices. People are probably influenced by this: https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-solving-the-first-fsf-ryf-hurd... where a Purism engineer describes a "trick" to store a memory controller training firmware in ROM and run it on a "secondary processsor" so it can get Librem 5 ryf-certified; but to this day Librem 5 is still not certified and probably won't because of this specific issue.
Also there are the people who correctly question that ryf is silly because it accepts software without code available if it is in ROM and only runs on a secondary processor. I currently have no counter-argument to this and I think it would be great if FSF explained it clearly. Nevertheless, there are some reasonable points to consider that stance:
- AFAIK, the form of accepted code is only for "secondary processors" and can't take over the system or compromise it,
- having things in ROM forces manufacturers to maximally simplify it,
- having things in ROM forces manufacturers to implement more features in software that can be checked and
- having things in ROM forces manufacturers to be extra careful when implementing it.Earlier quoted context omitted.
RYF allows various "tricks" of hiding blobs, so it is not what I'd use as the benchmark here. Raptor's standards are likely higher than what RYF would require...
I don't know if the firmware on embedded controllers in currently ryf-certified laptops are open source, but that is the only source of "trick" I can see that could be currently explored to get ryf certification. I've heard people saying things like "even a windows device could be ryf-certified if it was in ROM", but I see nothing even close to this when I look at currently ryf-certified devices. People are probably…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know if the firmware on embedded controllers in currently ryf-certified laptops are open source, but that is the only source of "trick" I can see that could be currently explored to get ryf certification. I've heard people saying things like "even a windows device could be ryf-certified if it was in ROM", but I see nothing even close to this when I look at currently ryf-certified devices. People are probably…
I'm not saying that RYF is entirely useless, just that "new version requires firmware blobs, old one didn't" is a clearer and stronger statement than mentioning RYF IMHO.
I mentioned ryf certification because Tallos II and Talos II Lite are the only ryf-certified modern systems available. Also, I bet FSF is very strict when certifying systems so we don't have to rely on the word of the vendor only.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/powerpc-architecture/ Geek for geek. Otherwise try wiki. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC Used in old apple before replaced by intel. In one console.
PowerPC is a derivative of the original POWER architecture by IBM. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_POWER_instruction_set_ar...
When i was there, two decades ago, people were making presentations internally saying the same thing - "without affordable volume machines that random people can buy and use to develop, this ecosystem will fail"
Then, like now, there were even organizations/companies people thought might eventually take care of doing this that weren't IBM (Spoiler alert: They didn't)
Given that it has been at least two decades, i'm not sure whether that makes the doomsayers wrong or right.
But I am sure of one thing: IBM didn't care to do it then, and doesn't seem likely to start caring to do it now
Earlier quoted context omitted.
TIL LLVM and gcc are not excellent free compilers and useless for longhair hippies. What do your hippies use?
I know nothing of the support for the POWER arch out there now... if you do, would you say it could be improved? is "corporate whim" stifling open support for them? Last I messed with POWER i couldn't find docs for what I needed and so just stuck with Intel Sparc and Alpha. (The last two were still viable market presences then; to give an idea of how long ago this was)
You can use google nowadays.