61–70 of 115 posts
From the abstract: > The immense hardware complexity of modern computers, both mobile phones and datacenter servers, is a seemingly endless source of bugs and vulnerabilities in system software. > Classical OSes cannot address this, since they only run on a small subset of the machine. The issue is interactions within the entire ensemble of firmware blobs, co-processors, and CPUs that we term the de facto OS. The cur…
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Who wants to spend tens of thousands of dollars for that ?
Right, I’m not quite sure where it fits within the market. It’s quite pricey for pro-sumer and not enterprise-y enough for larger companies to buy into it.
But maybe they'll make enough money to develop a lower-priced one that can reach more customers.
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It really depends on the complexity. Sure, 555 timers and even microcontrollers have datasheets. CPUs that run Linux, Wifi chips supporting recent standards, etc.? Rare. This is why Linux in the 90s was a big pain; you get some random Ethernet chip and there is no documentation on how to talk to it, so you're just dead in the water. (I think Android was the turning point. From then on, stuff had to support Linux, bec…
CPUs that run Linux, Wifi chips supporting recent standards, etc.? Rare. Intel was relatively open with its documentation (including reference schematics -- I think you can still find the 440BX ones on their site somewhere) until around the end of the P4 era, so that covers "CPUs that run Linux". As for the wireless stuff, I suspect a lot of that has to do with regulatory issues.
Think about how many billions of devices there are where you can't get simple a pinout diagram for the main CPU. I would argue only a tiny, TINY, percentage of any Linux devices actually have CPUs/SOCs/SOMs with sufficient documentation to look at from a hardware design standpoint.
I'm a bit torn here. On one side, I'd really love to have equipment that can be proven to be bug free in theory or in practice. On the other side, often enough the only thing allowing me as an user to actually use a computing device for things that have not been intended by the manufacturer - everything from running my own software over running pirated games to using ad and tracking blockers - are (serious) security bugs, or when one uses the manufacturer-provided options to load their own software, the device irrevocably bricks parts of itself like Samsung's Knox environment does after rooting your phone, which breaks a ton of stuff - most notably Netflix DRM or Google Pay.
I think one of the primary reasons that it is such a dumpster fire is there traditionally hasn't been an "open" ecosystem in the hardware world, though now they are being forced towards that direction kicking and screaming. Every part of the hardware ecosystem has traditionally been done in closed, NDA ridden environments and only over the last 5-10 years has that even started to change. Designing chips has required…
We're aiming to push things in the other direction with OpenTitan: https://github.com/lowRISC/opentitan/ It's an Open Silicon root of trust, all RTL (the actual hardware design in SystemVerilog), firmware, documentation and verification environment is open source and in the repository I just linked. We're closing in on our first discrete chip (details here https://opensource.googleblog.com/2023/06/opentitan-rtl-free.…
I really want to see an open motor control peripheral that could be used in robotics or UAVs, it's amazing how ubiquitous they are, yet rarely are very integrated like other controllers.
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Right, I’m not quite sure where it fits within the market. It’s quite pricey for pro-sumer and not enterprise-y enough for larger companies to buy into it.
It's about the fastest system you can get if you want open hardware. There are people willing to pay a premium for that. It's obviously not going to find a mass market at that price. But maybe they'll make enough money to develop a lower-priced one that can reach more customers.
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It really depends on the complexity. Sure, 555 timers and even microcontrollers have datasheets. CPUs that run Linux, Wifi chips supporting recent standards, etc.? Rare. This is why Linux in the 90s was a big pain; you get some random Ethernet chip and there is no documentation on how to talk to it, so you're just dead in the water. (I think Android was the turning point. From then on, stuff had to support Linux, bec…
CPUs that run Linux, Wifi chips supporting recent standards, etc.? Rare. Intel was relatively open with its documentation (including reference schematics -- I think you can still find the 440BX ones on their site somewhere) until around the end of the P4 era, so that covers "CPUs that run Linux". As for the wireless stuff, I suspect a lot of that has to do with regulatory issues.
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If I'm ever going to get on the conspiracy theory bandwagon, it will be on two topics: 1) Return to office. 2) Why we need a dedicated CPU and DRAM attached to flash memory. You can garbage collect and wear level in your OS if you want to. Manufacturers say "no, we have a super secret secret sauce that nobody else could possibly improve upon". Uh huh, sure.
> Why we need a dedicated CPU and DRAM attached to flash memory. You can garbage collect and wear level in your OS if you want to. The thing I don't get is, the chips are all commodities, and it's not like soldering them to a board is rocket science. Why isn't one of the companies that makes fully-specified inexpensive RISC-V chips selling one attached to some commodity flash chips and an NVMe connector? Include some…
The same goes for network offload features in ethernet controllers, make it an open architecture that you can write your own firmware for.
I've noticed the trend of ever-increasingly complex hardware with little or no change in performance since the 90s, and ranted about it extensively since I joined HN. I think we're past considering the problem from a technical perspective and need to look at the conspiratorial forces involved. To me, the problem is one of monopoly and corporate thinking. When Intel and AMD make most of the chips, we end up with a Cok…
What do you mean "little or no change in performance since the 90s"? Computers now are hundreds if not thousands of times faster than in the 90s. Also, if anything, modern desktop hardware is so complex not because of centralization, but because of de centralization. If your computer was made by a single manufacturer, that manufacturer could optimize the final product as much as it wanted, because it'd have control n…
Do you seriously think the person you’re replying to didn’t know this?