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All,
It has recently come to my attention that many in the free software movement are unaware of a relatively new development on x86 platforms that permanently removes the ability to use these platforms without also continually executing signed, proprietary code at the highest possible privilege level. All post-2013 (AMD) and virtually all post-2009 (Intel) systems contain this mandatory technology, and therefore, by design, can never be converted to run using pure FOSS. Prior to these changes projects such as coreboot could be used to replace the boot firmware with a FOSS alternative.
The technologies in question are the Intel Management Engine (ME) and the AMD Platform Security Processor (PSP). Both serve effectively the same purpose; to ensure that the physical owner of the machine never has full control of said machine. These technologies, in turn, are used to implement various forms of remote control and Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies, including Secure Boot, which even now requires FOSS users to purchase a license from Microsoft to boot FOSS on affected machines that lack an appropriate Secure Boot override. This includes, for example, many newer laptops. Major distributions have worked around this issue by purchasing a signing key from Microsoft for their binary packages, but the end user is unable to modify the signed software without a license from Microsoft, even though they have the source code available to them under the GPL.
Furthermore, these signed, proprietary, binary-only firmware blobs must execute on the service processor(s) before the main x86 CPU cores are even released from reset (AMD), or will hard reset the entire system after around 30 minutes of non-operation (Intel). These blobs continue to operate on the service processor(s) as long as the system is powered on, and in the case of the Intel ME they also continue to operate while the system is powered off but still has access to power (e.g. plugged in or charged battery attached). These services processors have full access to system memory and all system peripherals, effectively giving the binary blobs executing on them a higher privilege level than even the operating system kernel. Due to the ability to access system peripherals, these proprietary blobs could easily contain code to exfiltrate encryption keys, remotely activate microphones and cameras, plant unwanted data, or simply remotely disable the ability of the machine to boot FOSS operating systems entirely. Finally, the Intel ME firmware can be forcibly updated by a remote entity; it is unknown whether the AMD PSP contains similar functionality at this time.
So, what can an average user do? The obvious answer is to simply switch away from using the x86 architecture entirely. As Intel owns all rights to the x86 architecture, there will never be any new manufacturers licensed to make x86 chips, and therefore there will never be any competition to remove these DRM-laden antifeatures. There are numerous alternative architectures available, especially for those already using software with the source code available (i.e. FOSS), all of which can be licensed by other manufacturers should the need arise.
************************************************************************ General Overview of Alternate Architectures ************************************************************************ === ARM ===
While the ARM architecture may be more wildly known for locked-down computing products, there are several ARM devices on the market that allow full FOSS replacement of the boot firmware. Generally these are laptops, tablets, and embedded systems, with one example laptop being the ASUS C201 Chromebook: https://libreboot.org/docs/install/c201.html Using ARM in a mobile form factor also provides advantages of low cost and long battery life, albeit at the expense of overall system performance.
=== POWER ===
IBM has recently released their high-performance POWER8 architecture for third party licensing, and has also released a small treasure trove of firmware and documentation for these devices. POWER is the only architecture currently competitive with Intel in terms of raw performance, and boots using a fully FOSS firmware with no DRM antifeatures embedded. The primary disadvantage of power is cost, as it is currently targeted at the server and datacenter markets. We are attempting to bring POWER to the high-end workstation market in a FOSS-friendly form via the Talos™ Secure Workstation, but need additional interest to make this a reality: https://raptorengineeringinc.com/TALOS/prerelease.php
=== MIPS ===
Less well known than ARM, and with less vendor choice, MIPS is often overlooked. However, China has revived this architecture for general purpose computing with the Loongson core, and several machines are available using this processor. As a niche processor it has far worse performance than even a low-end ARM processor, but marginally better energy efficiency. Not recommended in light of ARM and POWER8: http://www.lemote.com/html/product/atx/2015/1227/8.html
=== RISCV ===
While this architecture is extremely limited in performance, price, and performance per watt compared to x86, ARM, or POWER, it is also one of the only fully open source CPU architectures available outside of an FPGA. and may eventually be competitive with MIPS in terms of raw performance. Currently there are no RISCV SoCs in production, however projects such as lowRISC aim to change that: http://www.lowrisc.org/
************************************************************************
So, what are your thoughts on the current x86 proprietary software situation? Are you willing to continue to use FOSS software inside the ever-shrinking x86 "software jail", or are you possibly willing to give up some cost or performance advantages in order to retain full control of the software running on your hardware? This is a question that will need to be answered soon; the long-term consequences of a fully TiVo-ized computing world are not to be taken lightly, and thus far the free software community has put up very little resistance to the antifeatures being forced into modern x86 platforms. I hope to provoke wider discussion on these topics via this message.
Thank you for your attention!
- -- Timothy Pearson Raptor Engineering +1 (415) 727-8645 (direct line) +1 (512) 690-0200 (switchboard) http://www.raptorengineeringinc.com
On Monday 4. April 2016 17.06.23 Timothy Pearson wrote:
General Overview of Alternate Architectures
=== ARM ===
While the ARM architecture may be more wildly known for locked-down
"widely"
computing products, there are several ARM devices on the market that allow full FOSS replacement of the boot firmware. Generally these are laptops, tablets, and embedded systems, with one example laptop being the ASUS C201 Chromebook: https://libreboot.org/docs/install/c201.html Using ARM in a mobile form factor also provides advantages of low cost and long battery life, albeit at the expense of overall system performance.
What about all the single-board computers available plus initiatives to make open hardware [*] laptops and netbooks? Maybe those initiatives need our support in preference to various products from the usual corporate players who have readily introduced those control/surveillance technologies into their other products.
Some quick links:
http://rhombus-tech.net/community_ideas/laptop_15in/
https://olimex.wordpress.com/2015/11/24/a64-olinuxino-oshw-linux-laptop-idea... becomes-more-real/
[*] Remind me again what the "correct" term is for fully-documented and freely-modifiable/distributable hardware is, as it clearly isn't that memorable.
=== POWER ===
IBM has recently released their high-performance POWER8 architecture for third party licensing, and has also released a small treasure trove of firmware and documentation for these devices. POWER is the only architecture currently competitive with Intel in terms of raw performance, and boots using a fully FOSS firmware with no DRM antifeatures embedded. The primary disadvantage of power is cost, as it is currently targeted at the server and datacenter markets. We are attempting to bring POWER to the high-end workstation market in a FOSS-friendly form via the Talos™ Secure Workstation, but need additional interest to make this a reality: https://raptorengineeringinc.com/TALOS/prerelease.php
I've noticed a lot of IBM promotional activity around POWER8 of late: there was a Fellowship blog post that suddenly appeared promoting the POWER architecture, I've seen targeted adverts featuring POWER, and now there's this message. Indeed, the blog post used very similar language to "POWER is the only architecture currently competitive with Intel in terms of raw performance", which may or may not be true, but I can't help feeling that a bunch of people have been asked to let us all know.
Unlike various other architectures, POWER risks sitting in the same position as it did at the start of its life: at the top end and largely unavailable to most of us. It possibly needs another big vendor to give it a boost - just as Apple managed to do - but that doesn't necessarily change the availability situation for open hardware.
=== MIPS ===
Less well known than ARM, and with less vendor choice, MIPS is often overlooked. However, China has revived this architecture for general purpose computing with the Loongson core, and several machines are available using this processor. As a niche processor it has far worse performance than even a low-end ARM processor, but marginally better energy efficiency. Not recommended in light of ARM and POWER8: http://www.lemote.com/html/product/atx/2015/1227/8.html
There's also Ingenic, Atheros (now part of Qualcomm) and an assortment of other MIPS vendors. Performance might not be great amongst some of their products - multi-gigahertz, multi-core monsters are probably not the focus here for router manufacturers - but these CPUs are still interesting. My impression is that MIPS (Imagination) are targeting IoT applications alongside trying to get their proprietary graphics technologies into various products (unfortunately).
More quick links:
http://rhombus-tech.net/ingenic/jz4775/
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/imgtec/creator-ci40-the-ultimate-iot-in... a-box-dev-kit
Whether MIPS-based products are recommended or not, in contrast to other architectures, perhaps depends on whether you can actually buy the products concerned. If POWER is now available from a range of sources like ARM and MIPS devices are, then maybe it is more interesting. Otherwise, it mostly isn't, apart from in some kind of paper exercise about what is "best".
=== RISCV ===
While this architecture is extremely limited in performance, price, and performance per watt compared to x86, ARM, or POWER, it is also one of the only fully open source CPU architectures available outside of an FPGA. and may eventually be competitive with MIPS in terms of raw performance. Currently there are no RISCV SoCs in production, however projects such as lowRISC aim to change that: http://www.lowrisc.org/
This is definitely one to watch, given the backing from various companies that probably don't care about Intel's agenda. I'd like to hear some more of the detail behind that performance assessment. Having played around a bit with MIPS recently, there are some fairly obvious areas where something like RISC-V could easily achieve greater performance than MIPS. Indeed, I think that this is why some people treated OpenRISC - based on the first version of the MIPS architecture - with some disdain.
(And thinking about OpenRISC reminds me about LM32 and various other architectures that have probably only remained within the FPGA space - at least with regard to general availability - because of lack of funding.)
Paul
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On 04/04/2016 11:00 AM, Paul Boddie wrote:
On Monday 4. April 2016 17.06.23 Timothy Pearson wrote:
General Overview of Alternate Architectures
=== ARM ===
While the ARM architecture may be more wildly known for locked-down
"widely"
Yes, that was a typo.
What about all the single-board computers available plus initiatives to make open hardware [*] laptops and netbooks? Maybe those initiatives need our support in preference to various products from the usual corporate players who have readily introduced those control/surveillance technologies into their other products.
Some quick links:
http://rhombus-tech.net/community_ideas/laptop_15in/
https://olimex.wordpress.com/2015/11/24/a64-olinuxino-oshw-linux-laptop-idea... becomes-more-real/
[*] Remind me again what the "correct" term is for fully-documented and freely-modifiable/distributable hardware is, as it clearly isn't that memorable.
ARM is very nice for low end / remote work and embedded systems, there's no question about that. However, at least in my experience, it is woefully inadequate for non-trivial content creation tasks (editing video, engineering design work, etc.).
I've noticed a lot of IBM promotional activity around POWER8 of late: there was a Fellowship blog post that suddenly appeared promoting the POWER architecture, I've seen targeted adverts featuring POWER, and now there's this message. Indeed, the blog post used very similar language to "POWER is the only architecture currently competitive with Intel in terms of raw performance", which may or may not be true, but I can't help feeling that a bunch of people have been asked to let us all know.
That statement was based on actual in-house benchmarks: https://raptorengineeringinc.com/TALOS/power_advantages.php
We're not paid by IBM to promote their processors by any means. The simple fact is Intel is the dominant processor manufacturer, and they lead hands down in price, performance, and power consumption. They also refuse to give machine owners full access to their hardware, putting people in a rather sticky situation.
If you know of another architecture that can compete with Haswell in terms of raw performance please let us know about it!
Unlike various other architectures, POWER risks sitting in the same position as it did at the start of its life: at the top end and largely unavailable to most of us. It possibly needs another big vendor to give it a boost - just as Apple managed to do - but that doesn't necessarily change the availability situation for open hardware.
Yes, it's a risk. However, everything seems to be risky right now. x86 cannot be trusted, POWER itself has somewhat poor power efficiency, and no other architecture we are aware of comes even close to the performance of Intel and AMD's processors from a decade ago. You're going to have a hard time convincing me that the future is holding on to obsolete hardware from 10 years ago, purchasing overpriced systems that perform worse than said hardware, or licensing the right to run limited FOSS software from a proprietary vendor. From our perspective, based solely on internal evaluation and comparison of various machines available right now, POWER offers the best chance to provide reasonably modern libre systems over the next 5 - 10 years.
There's also Ingenic, Atheros (now part of Qualcomm) and an assortment of other MIPS vendors. Performance might not be great amongst some of their products - multi-gigahertz, multi-core monsters are probably not the focus here for router manufacturers - but these CPUs are still interesting. My impression is that MIPS (Imagination) are targeting IoT applications alongside trying to get their proprietary graphics technologies into various products (unfortunately).
More quick links:
http://rhombus-tech.net/ingenic/jz4775/
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/imgtec/creator-ci40-the-ultimate-iot-in... a-box-dev-kit
Whether MIPS-based products are recommended or not, in contrast to other architectures, perhaps depends on whether you can actually buy the products concerned. If POWER is now available from a range of sources like ARM and MIPS devices are, then maybe it is more interesting. Otherwise, it mostly isn't, apart from in some kind of paper exercise about what is "best".
Yeah, MIPS seems mostly targeted at embedded systems, and honestly this is an area where RISCV could shine while it tries to ramp up to ARM-level performance. Regarding POWER, bear in mind the architecture was only opened up for licensing / third party manufacture a couple of years ago, and China is already manufacturing custom CPUs using POWER8. If people are willing to take a risk on POWER it has the chance to compete directly with Intel. If not, the sad reality is it will be many, many years (possibly never) before FOSS systems can reasonably be used to design new computing products. RISCV is just too far down the line to be a viable option yet; nothing has been taped out and we're still only talking single core CPUs in the pipeline for eventual production.
=== RISCV ===
While this architecture is extremely limited in performance, price, and performance per watt compared to x86, ARM, or POWER, it is also one of the only fully open source CPU architectures available outside of an FPGA. and may eventually be competitive with MIPS in terms of raw performance. Currently there are no RISCV SoCs in production, however projects such as lowRISC aim to change that: http://www.lowrisc.org/
This is definitely one to watch, given the backing from various companies that probably don't care about Intel's agenda. I'd like to hear some more of the detail behind that performance assessment. Having played around a bit with MIPS recently, there are some fairly obvious areas where something like RISC-V could easily achieve greater performance than MIPS. Indeed, I think that this is why some people treated OpenRISC - based on the first version of the MIPS architecture - with some disdain.
(And thinking about OpenRISC reminds me about LM32 and various other architectures that have probably only remained within the FPGA space - at least with regard to general availability - because of lack of funding.)
It's difficult to evaluate performance on a product that isn't even taped out yet, however all indications are a single core variant is going to be the first production model. Immediately that puts it far behind the 8 Loongson MIPS cores on the Loonson 3B.
- -- Timothy Pearson Raptor Engineering +1 (415) 727-8645 (direct line) +1 (512) 690-0200 (switchboard) http://www.raptorengineeringinc.com
On Monday 4. April 2016 19.00.17 Timothy Pearson wrote:
ARM is very nice for low end / remote work and embedded systems, there's no question about that. However, at least in my experience, it is woefully inadequate for non-trivial content creation tasks (editing video, engineering design work, etc.).
I don't know whether the more recent 64-bit products will make a big difference here. I remarked in another forum that one benefit of a fully-64- bit architecture is the ability to address more memory, but then I got flamed for saying that people might need more than 2GB RAM (as I sit and write this, and that earlier message, on a machine with only 1GB RAM).
Various widely- and wildly- ;-) hyped 64-bit ARM products (Raspberry Pi 3, for example, plus Allwinner A64 stuff) don't appear to physically support more than 2GB RAM, and I've only seen some Freescale i.MX devices and products supporting 4GB, and those were 32-bit devices with extended addressing features.
Of course, AMD are getting round to delivering ARM-based products, which might bring more emphasis on performance, but then it's AMD with all the objections you've raised.
I've noticed a lot of IBM promotional activity around POWER8 of late: there was a Fellowship blog post that suddenly appeared promoting the POWER architecture, I've seen targeted adverts featuring POWER, and now there's this message. Indeed, the blog post used very similar language to "POWER is the only architecture currently competitive with Intel in terms of raw performance", which may or may not be true, but I can't help feeling that a bunch of people have been asked to let us all know.
That statement was based on actual in-house benchmarks: https://raptorengineeringinc.com/TALOS/power_advantages.php
Here's the blog post I mentioned:
https://seravo.fi/2016/linux-and-power8-microprocessors
We're not paid by IBM to promote their processors by any means. The simple fact is Intel is the dominant processor manufacturer, and they lead hands down in price, performance, and power consumption. They also refuse to give machine owners full access to their hardware, putting people in a rather sticky situation.
It could be that people have become aware of POWER again and the "news" travels fast. I suppose that a lot of people thought that POWER was going the way of PA-RISC and Itanium.
[...]
Yes, it's a risk. However, everything seems to be risky right now. x86 cannot be trusted, POWER itself has somewhat poor power efficiency, and
That genuinely surprises me. I thought that Motorola/Freescale/NXP had pitched POWER at embedded markets and that apart from IBM's own direction with POWER, it had largely followed ARM into the embedded space.
[...]
Yeah, MIPS seems mostly targeted at embedded systems, and honestly this is an area where RISCV could shine while it tries to ramp up to ARM-level performance. Regarding POWER, bear in mind the architecture was only opened up for licensing / third party manufacture a couple of years ago, and China is already manufacturing custom CPUs using POWER8.
One difference here might be that Chinese manufacturers were already apparently making MIPS-compatible designs without an architecture licence, probably because they weren't infringing any patents, or perhaps because it wasn't worth MIPS going after those manufacturers. (OpenRISC was able to exist precisely because the original MIPS patents had expired, as I understand it.)
IBM, meanwhile, has historically been aggressive with microarchitecture patents: I recall some remarks about litigation against Sun and ARM, with the latter successfully defending because one of the originators of the ARM architecture dug up some old software from the Acorn era that supposedly demonstrated prior art on whichever patents were involved.
But anyway, I see that the laptop project that Tobias linked to intends to use Freescale products, which means that a reliable manufacturer is standing behind the architecture and actually making products available, so maybe there is some mileage in choosing POWER-based products for open hardware designs.
Paul
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On 04/04/2016 01:46 PM, Paul Boddie wrote:
On Monday 4. April 2016 19.00.17 Timothy Pearson wrote:
ARM is very nice for low end / remote work and embedded systems, there's no question about that. However, at least in my experience, it is woefully inadequate for non-trivial content creation tasks (editing video, engineering design work, etc.).
I don't know whether the more recent 64-bit products will make a big difference here. I remarked in another forum that one benefit of a fully-64- bit architecture is the ability to address more memory, but then I got flamed for saying that people might need more than 2GB RAM (as I sit and write this, and that earlier message, on a machine with only 1GB RAM).
Various widely- and wildly- ;-) hyped 64-bit ARM products (Raspberry Pi 3, for example, plus Allwinner A64 stuff) don't appear to physically support more than 2GB RAM, and I've only seen some Freescale i.MX devices and products supporting 4GB, and those were 32-bit devices with extended addressing features.
I was fairly excited about the upcoming 64-bit ARM server products until the third party benchmarks came out indicating performance less than an Intel Atom processor (!). That for a $3k+ price tag and higher power consumption than Atom if you want server-grade features such as ECC and PCIe.
Of course, AMD are getting round to delivering ARM-based products, which might bring more emphasis on performance, but then it's AMD with all the objections you've raised.
AMD has locked away all the documentation for the A1100; given their track record with the PSP it is highly doubtful they will allow unsigned (FOSS) boot firmware.
That statement was based on actual in-house benchmarks: https://raptorengineeringinc.com/TALOS/power_advantages.php
Here's the blog post I mentioned:
Interesting; I actually had not seen that one before.
It could be that people have become aware of POWER again and the "news" travels fast. I suppose that a lot of people thought that POWER was going the way of PA-RISC and Itanium.
That would be my best guess. Intel is also helping this by keeping their Xeon prices sky high and their platforms locked down.
[...]
Yes, it's a risk. However, everything seems to be risky right now. x86 cannot be trusted, POWER itself has somewhat poor power efficiency, and
That genuinely surprises me. I thought that Motorola/Freescale/NXP had pitched POWER at embedded markets and that apart from IBM's own direction with POWER, it had largely followed ARM into the embedded space.
To be fair, the power efficiency conclusions are based on both direct measurements of the POWER8 chips and IBM's failure years ago to provide power efficient chips to Apple for their laptops. I imagine Freescale and similar have done a fairly good job in lowering the power consumption of the embedded POWER architecture.
[...]
Yeah, MIPS seems mostly targeted at embedded systems, and honestly this is an area where RISCV could shine while it tries to ramp up to ARM-level performance. Regarding POWER, bear in mind the architecture was only opened up for licensing / third party manufacture a couple of years ago, and China is already manufacturing custom CPUs using POWER8.
One difference here might be that Chinese manufacturers were already apparently making MIPS-compatible designs without an architecture licence, probably because they weren't infringing any patents, or perhaps because it wasn't worth MIPS going after those manufacturers. (OpenRISC was able to exist precisely because the original MIPS patents had expired, as I understand it.)
This is quite possible, yes. It also puts US/EU users of said chips on shaky ground unless it can be proven the MIPS architecture is actually free of patent restrictions.
IBM, meanwhile, has historically been aggressive with microarchitecture patents: I recall some remarks about litigation against Sun and ARM, with the latter successfully defending because one of the originators of the ARM architecture dug up some old software from the Acorn era that supposedly demonstrated prior art on whichever patents were involved.
It looks like IBM has been changing their tune ever since they realised they were mishandling POWER to the point that x86 and ARM would become permanently dominant. Now that a third party foundation controls POWER architecture licensing and patents I don't think this will be as much of a concern (at least not any more than ARM is right now).
But anyway, I see that the laptop project that Tobias linked to intends to use Freescale products, which means that a reliable manufacturer is standing behind the architecture and actually making products available, so maybe there is some mileage in choosing POWER-based products for open hardware designs.
This is good to know as well. I always thought it would be POWER on workstations and servers with ARM laptops remoting in; perhaps it could actually be various flavors of POWER throughout the entire ecosystem. At least there could be some real competition in the laptop sphere, unlike the workstation / server realm as it stands today.
- -- Timothy Pearson Raptor Engineering +1 (415) 727-8645 (direct line) +1 (512) 690-0200 (switchboard) http://www.raptorengineeringinc.com
Half a year ago I baught a libreboot machine from Minifree, which is now my main computer. I own several ARM based computers, with processors from Texas Instruments and Allwinner, which I use for various other tasks. I'm also interested in PowerPC, as a replacement for Intel. Ive heard about a PowerPC notebook[1] as a community effort.
Tobias Platen
[1] http://www.powerpc-notebook.org/en/
On 04/04/2016 05:06 PM, Timothy Pearson wrote:
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All,
It has recently come to my attention that many in the free software movement are unaware of a relatively new development on x86 platforms that permanently removes the ability to use these platforms without also continually executing signed, proprietary code at the highest possible privilege level. All post-2013 (AMD) and virtually all post-2009 (Intel) systems contain this mandatory technology, and therefore, by design, can never be converted to run using pure FOSS. Prior to these changes projects such as coreboot could be used to replace the boot firmware with a FOSS alternative.
The technologies in question are the Intel Management Engine (ME) and the AMD Platform Security Processor (PSP). Both serve effectively the same purpose; to ensure that the physical owner of the machine never has full control of said machine. These technologies, in turn, are used to implement various forms of remote control and Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies, including Secure Boot, which even now requires FOSS users to purchase a license from Microsoft to boot FOSS on affected machines that lack an appropriate Secure Boot override. This includes, for example, many newer laptops. Major distributions have worked around this issue by purchasing a signing key from Microsoft for their binary packages, but the end user is unable to modify the signed software without a license from Microsoft, even though they have the source code available to them under the GPL.
Furthermore, these signed, proprietary, binary-only firmware blobs must execute on the service processor(s) before the main x86 CPU cores are even released from reset (AMD), or will hard reset the entire system after around 30 minutes of non-operation (Intel). These blobs continue to operate on the service processor(s) as long as the system is powered on, and in the case of the Intel ME they also continue to operate while the system is powered off but still has access to power (e.g. plugged in or charged battery attached). These services processors have full access to system memory and all system peripherals, effectively giving the binary blobs executing on them a higher privilege level than even the operating system kernel. Due to the ability to access system peripherals, these proprietary blobs could easily contain code to exfiltrate encryption keys, remotely activate microphones and cameras, plant unwanted data, or simply remotely disable the ability of the machine to boot FOSS operating systems entirely. Finally, the Intel ME firmware can be forcibly updated by a remote entity; it is unknown whether the AMD PSP contains similar functionality at this time.
So, what can an average user do? The obvious answer is to simply switch away from using the x86 architecture entirely. As Intel owns all rights to the x86 architecture, there will never be any new manufacturers licensed to make x86 chips, and therefore there will never be any competition to remove these DRM-laden antifeatures. There are numerous alternative architectures available, especially for those already using software with the source code available (i.e. FOSS), all of which can be licensed by other manufacturers should the need arise.
General Overview of Alternate Architectures
=== ARM ===
While the ARM architecture may be more wildly known for locked-down computing products, there are several ARM devices on the market that allow full FOSS replacement of the boot firmware. Generally these are laptops, tablets, and embedded systems, with one example laptop being the ASUS C201 Chromebook: https://libreboot.org/docs/install/c201.html Using ARM in a mobile form factor also provides advantages of low cost and long battery life, albeit at the expense of overall system performance.
=== POWER ===
IBM has recently released their high-performance POWER8 architecture for third party licensing, and has also released a small treasure trove of firmware and documentation for these devices. POWER is the only architecture currently competitive with Intel in terms of raw performance, and boots using a fully FOSS firmware with no DRM antifeatures embedded. The primary disadvantage of power is cost, as it is currently targeted at the server and datacenter markets. We are attempting to bring POWER to the high-end workstation market in a FOSS-friendly form via the Talos™ Secure Workstation, but need additional interest to make this a reality: https://raptorengineeringinc.com/TALOS/prerelease.php
=== MIPS ===
Less well known than ARM, and with less vendor choice, MIPS is often overlooked. However, China has revived this architecture for general purpose computing with the Loongson core, and several machines are available using this processor. As a niche processor it has far worse performance than even a low-end ARM processor, but marginally better energy efficiency. Not recommended in light of ARM and POWER8: http://www.lemote.com/html/product/atx/2015/1227/8.html
=== RISCV ===
While this architecture is extremely limited in performance, price, and performance per watt compared to x86, ARM, or POWER, it is also one of the only fully open source CPU architectures available outside of an FPGA. and may eventually be competitive with MIPS in terms of raw performance. Currently there are no RISCV SoCs in production, however projects such as lowRISC aim to change that: http://www.lowrisc.org/
So, what are your thoughts on the current x86 proprietary software situation? Are you willing to continue to use FOSS software inside the ever-shrinking x86 "software jail", or are you possibly willing to give up some cost or performance advantages in order to retain full control of the software running on your hardware? This is a question that will need to be answered soon; the long-term consequences of a fully TiVo-ized computing world are not to be taken lightly, and thus far the free software community has put up very little resistance to the antifeatures being forced into modern x86 platforms. I hope to provoke wider discussion on these topics via this message.
Thank you for your attention!
Timothy Pearson Raptor Engineering +1 (415) 727-8645 (direct line) +1 (512) 690-0200 (switchboard) http://www.raptorengineeringinc.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/
iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJXAoLsAAoJEK+E3vEXDOFbstsH/0BrB1VLKuSDDPdV4C7qJQOc 5euFCVc3cjZJhl+oGHQ2LuSuDM6J9DuYRxJQq53Xx9WYrNMSuqNjcnaagIhew+Ci ocMEQNB3G7ob4+56kyYrOTL7YoqrFcqa9Y5rpBXBt5ufnYt/g3n1Zin7xQycJ/rP ldLeADsaTJpsRgWLBTDnOAmMGBh1Xv4d4w1ZYAgoNfGJD6nc7NhihajIMZRIgHIn /Uo2brToF6exizHFMGWLwYdEKLOkoau7Bmz5yaGKI0JJF7hzq/G9dpecKf42G1ra Fr9q07JHCre7JJrq6SlbjapJyDB+OOK+YoFDjTsxaikV8E20AIQG4VkS3DsL7rU= =47/v -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion@fsfeurope.org https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
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On 04/04/16 18:42, Tobias Platen wrote:
Half a year ago I baught a libreboot machine from Minifree, which is now my main computer. I own several ARM based computers, with processors from Texas Instruments and Allwinner, which I use for various other tasks. I'm also interested in PowerPC, as a replacement for Intel. Ive heard about a PowerPC notebook[1] as a community effort.
This type of practical feedback and action is really underestimated
If every serious free software developer and user goes out and buys at least one piece of genuinely free hardware and tries to use it for some aspect of what we do then it will make us much more conscious of the fact that these platforms need to be supported seriously, even if we aren't explicitly things developing for them.
The question is, can we make a shortlist of devices that people should consider buying? Such a shortlist would probably consider:
- - price and value for money
- - suitability for specific tasks (e.g. compiling, making presentations, watching movies, office work)
- - warranty and servicing issues, e.g. for laptops - can the battery be replaced, - how easy is it to get it fixed or replaced at short notice if it fails while traveling to a conference
- - which distributions are supporting the device seriously and how many other developers already have something similar, does it have critical mass
Collating these details for various products in each category (e.g. laptop, workstation, home server, embedded development board) will make it much easier for people to overcome whatever inertia keeps them from acquiring free hardware.
Going beyond that, finding a way to gift such devices to free software developers could create even more momentum around support for free hardware.
On Tuesday 5. April 2016 10.20.49 Daniel Pocock wrote:
On 04/04/16 18:42, Tobias Platen wrote:
Half a year ago I baught a libreboot machine from Minifree, which is now my main computer. I own several ARM based computers, with processors from Texas Instruments and Allwinner, which I use for various other tasks. I'm also interested in PowerPC, as a replacement for Intel. Ive heard about a PowerPC notebook[1] as a community effort.
This type of practical feedback and action is really underestimated
If every serious free software developer and user goes out and buys at least one piece of genuinely free hardware and tries to use it for some aspect of what we do then it will make us much more conscious of the fact that these platforms need to be supported seriously, even if we aren't explicitly things developing for them.
Agreed. I'm fed up of hearing about people who "must" have a MacBook (or whatever they're called) because of their supposed reliability or friendliness to Free Software, or because those people think it runs a "good enough version of Unix", as they then go and install all the GNU tools, anyway, after eventually discovering what everyone who had to use proprietary Unix a decade or two ago already knew.
The question is, can we make a shortlist of devices that people should consider buying? Such a shortlist would probably consider:
price and value for money
suitability for specific tasks (e.g. compiling, making
presentations, watching movies, office work)
warranty and servicing issues, e.g. for laptops
- can the battery be replaced,
- how easy is it to get it fixed or replaced at short notice if it fails while traveling to a conference
which distributions are supporting the device seriously and how many
other developers already have something similar, does it have critical mass
Collating these details for various products in each category (e.g. laptop, workstation, home server, embedded development board) will make it much easier for people to overcome whatever inertia keeps them from acquiring free hardware.
This kind of thing is a lot of work. We tried to collect a list of hardware vendors on the wiki:
http://wiki.fsfe.org/Migrated/Hardware Vendors
(Everything on the wiki has been moved around, so links may need to be followed via error pages.)
And there wasn't an attempt to catalogue the details, either. Really, it was enough work just tracking whether the companies offering stuff were still doing so or were even still trading at all.
Going beyond that, finding a way to gift such devices to free software developers could create even more momentum around support for free hardware.
I would rather Free Software developers came to their senses and made the right purchasing decisions than have them getting presents that they probably don't want and which end up lying around unused (or sold on, if various device developer programmes are any indication).
Paul
On 05/04/16 13:42, Paul Boddie wrote:
On Tuesday 5. April 2016 10.20.49 Daniel Pocock wrote:
On 04/04/16 18:42, Tobias Platen wrote:
Half a year ago I baught a libreboot machine from Minifree, which is now my main computer. I own several ARM based computers, with processors from Texas Instruments and Allwinner, which I use for various other tasks. I'm also interested in PowerPC, as a replacement for Intel. Ive heard about a PowerPC notebook[1] as a community effort.
This type of practical feedback and action is really underestimated
If every serious free software developer and user goes out and buys at least one piece of genuinely free hardware and tries to use it for some aspect of what we do then it will make us much more conscious of the fact that these platforms need to be supported seriously, even if we aren't explicitly things developing for them.
Agreed. I'm fed up of hearing about people who "must" have a MacBook (or whatever they're called) because of their supposed reliability or friendliness to Free Software, or because those people think it runs a "good enough version of Unix", as they then go and install all the GNU tools, anyway, after eventually discovering what everyone who had to use proprietary Unix a decade or two ago already knew.
The question is, can we make a shortlist of devices that people should consider buying? Such a shortlist would probably consider:
price and value for money
suitability for specific tasks (e.g. compiling, making
presentations, watching movies, office work)
warranty and servicing issues, e.g. for laptops
- can the battery be replaced,
- how easy is it to get it fixed or replaced at short notice if it fails while traveling to a conference
which distributions are supporting the device seriously and how many
other developers already have something similar, does it have critical mass
Collating these details for various products in each category (e.g. laptop, workstation, home server, embedded development board) will make it much easier for people to overcome whatever inertia keeps them from acquiring free hardware.
This kind of thing is a lot of work. We tried to collect a list of hardware vendors on the wiki:
http://wiki.fsfe.org/Migrated/Hardware Vendors
(Everything on the wiki has been moved around, so links may need to be followed via error pages.)
And there wasn't an attempt to catalogue the details, either. Really, it was enough work just tracking whether the companies offering stuff were still doing so or were even still trading at all.
Thanks for that feedback. It doesn't need to be a list of every possible option. Showing at least one or two suitable options and the criteria used to evaluate them gives people confidence to buy them.
Going beyond that, finding a way to gift such devices to free software developers could create even more momentum around support for free hardware.
I would rather Free Software developers came to their senses and made the right purchasing decisions than have them getting presents that they probably don't want and which end up lying around unused (or sold on, if various device developer programmes are any indication).
That is a generalization
If you give 1,000 laptops with genuinely free hardware to developers, I suspect some of those will appear on eBay but definitely not all of them. Some would be put to good use: if just 20% of the recipients did something serious with the device, it may compensate for the cost of the laptops "wasted" on the other 80% of developers.
By way of analogy, I've heard that the infantry has to shoot 8,000 bullets for every 1 enemy they kill.
Regards,
Daniel
On Tuesday 5. April 2016 14.27.22 Daniel Pocock wrote:
On 05/04/16 13:42, Paul Boddie wrote:
This kind of thing is a lot of work. We tried to collect a list of hardware vendors on the wiki:
http://wiki.fsfe.org/Migrated/Hardware_Vendors
(Fixed this for e-mail linking purposes.)
(Everything on the wiki has been moved around, so links may need to be followed via error pages.)
And there wasn't an attempt to catalogue the details, either. Really, it was enough work just tracking whether the companies offering stuff were still doing so or were even still trading at all.
Thanks for that feedback. It doesn't need to be a list of every possible option. Showing at least one or two suitable options and the criteria used to evaluate them gives people confidence to buy them.
The FSF "holiday gift guide" did that for several product categories.
Going beyond that, finding a way to gift such devices to free software developers could create even more momentum around support for free hardware.
I would rather Free Software developers came to their senses and made the right purchasing decisions than have them getting presents that they probably don't want and which end up lying around unused (or sold on, if various device developer programmes are any indication).
That is a generalization
People get very sensitive about this when I mention it. What I conclude from that is that some people who benefited from badly-targeted give-aways know that their involvement was speculative and was never really likely to advance the supposed objectives of those give-aways. The lesson, especially when one might be asking people to donate their own money to make such things happen (as opposed to it being funded by some corporate slush fund with vague advocacy objectives), is to be very specific and to have clear goals when handing stuff out (as discussed below).
If you give 1,000 laptops with genuinely free hardware to developers, I suspect some of those will appear on eBay but definitely not all of them. Some would be put to good use: if just 20% of the recipients did something serious with the device, it may compensate for the cost of the laptops "wasted" on the other 80% of developers.
By way of analogy, I've heard that the infantry has to shoot 8,000 bullets for every 1 enemy they kill.
Yes, but people who wage war generally have much larger budgets and can readily get them replenished. We're mostly in the position of throwing cents at worthy causes and spending our own time trying to help them along, while our opponents are funded with large dollar amounts and usually get paid to work against us, too.
Or by way of analogy, the smart strategist chooses their battles and refuses to get dragged into every provocation.
In any case, from following initiatives like EOMA-68, it appears that key people do generally get access (or will get access) to hardware in order to make it ready for wider use. My impression is that there's commercial common sense involved here: there are businesses that have already realised what Timothy Pearson wrote about and are willing to fund work that steers clear of Intel/AMD restrictions and defects.
It will be products by those forward-looking businesses that should ultimately be those preferred by enlightened Free Software developers when spending their own money. I guess those businesses will be able to make their own decisions about whether they might want to give products to developers to improve the customer experience, particularly after the groundwork to make a viable product has been done.
Paul
On 05/04/16 16:01, Paul Boddie wrote:
On Tuesday 5. April 2016 14.27.22 Daniel Pocock wrote:
On 05/04/16 13:42, Paul Boddie wrote:
This kind of thing is a lot of work. We tried to collect a list of hardware vendors on the wiki:
http://wiki.fsfe.org/Migrated/Hardware_Vendors
(Fixed this for e-mail linking purposes.)
(Everything on the wiki has been moved around, so links may need to be followed via error pages.)
And there wasn't an attempt to catalogue the details, either. Really, it was enough work just tracking whether the companies offering stuff were still doing so or were even still trading at all.
Thanks for that feedback. It doesn't need to be a list of every possible option. Showing at least one or two suitable options and the criteria used to evaluate them gives people confidence to buy them.
The FSF "holiday gift guide" did that for several product categories.
Great, thanks for pointing that out
Going beyond that, finding a way to gift such devices to free software developers could create even more momentum around support for free hardware.
I would rather Free Software developers came to their senses and made the right purchasing decisions than have them getting presents that they probably don't want and which end up lying around unused (or sold on, if various device developer programmes are any indication).
That is a generalization
People get very sensitive about this when I mention it. What I conclude from that is that some people who benefited from badly-targeted give-aways know that their involvement was speculative and was never really likely to advance the supposed objectives of those give-aways. The lesson, especially when one might be asking people to donate their own money to make such things happen (as opposed to it being funded by some corporate slush fund with vague advocacy objectives), is to be very specific and to have clear goals when handing stuff out (as discussed below).
If you give 1,000 laptops with genuinely free hardware to developers, I suspect some of those will appear on eBay but definitely not all of them. Some would be put to good use: if just 20% of the recipients did something serious with the device, it may compensate for the cost of the laptops "wasted" on the other 80% of developers.
By way of analogy, I've heard that the infantry has to shoot 8,000 bullets for every 1 enemy they kill.
Yes, but people who wage war generally have much larger budgets and can readily get them replenished. We're mostly in the position of throwing cents
Well, they can usually print the money to replenish their budgets too, the continental dollar being a classic example.
at worthy causes and spending our own time trying to help them along, while our opponents are funded with large dollar amounts and usually get paid to work against us, too.
Or by way of analogy, the smart strategist chooses their battles and refuses to get dragged into every provocation.
In any case, from following initiatives like EOMA-68, it appears that key people do generally get access (or will get access) to hardware in order to make it ready for wider use. My impression is that there's commercial common sense involved here: there are businesses that have already realised what Timothy Pearson wrote about and are willing to fund work that steers clear of Intel/AMD restrictions and defects.
It will be products by those forward-looking businesses that should ultimately be those preferred by enlightened Free Software developers when spending their own money. I guess those businesses will be able to make their own decisions about whether they might want to give products to developers to improve the customer experience, particularly after the groundwork to make a viable product has been done.
Highly targeted gifts of hardware to people developing for that hardware is an essential step but it is not enough.
Sure, if somebody is going to volunteer their time to make the audio driver or something they need to be given the hardware.
If essential drivers are not available, then giving the hardware to other developers is likely to be a big waste too.
Once the drivers are available though, wider exposure is needed. Some developers will simply use the device and report bugs. Time spent by a developer filing a well documented bug report is just as valuable as time spent coding.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the majority of developers are often very focused. For example, if a developer is working on a sound compression library, they might want to completely immerse themselves in that task for 6 weeks and not be distracted by the glitches in some experimental new laptop or IDE. This is one reason you often see developers using a piece of hardware that appears inconsistent with their values. When they do stop to check out that free laptop, they may well focus 100% of their energy on it for a day or so but if they are not confident with it after a few hours and they have to move on to some other task then they may well cast it aside and come back to it 2-3 months later.
Regards,
Daniel
There is also http://0pf.org/ project that aims to make free CPU w/ SuperH instruction set (FPGA RTL is available under BSD license). Unfortunately no news on the site since 06/18/2015.
On Monday 4. April 2016 17.06.23 Timothy Pearson wrote:
=== POWER ===
IBM has recently released their high-performance POWER8 architecture for third party licensing, and has also released a small treasure trove of firmware and documentation for these devices. POWER is the only architecture currently competitive with Intel in terms of raw performance, and boots using a fully FOSS firmware with no DRM antifeatures embedded. The primary disadvantage of power is cost, as it is currently targeted at the server and datacenter markets. We are attempting to bring POWER to the high-end workstation market in a FOSS-friendly form via the Talos™ Secure Workstation, but need additional interest to make this a reality: https://raptorengineeringinc.com/TALOS/prerelease.php
Having seen the EOMA68 crowdfunding campaign get funded on Crowd Supply, it was interesting to see you proceed with a rather more ambitious campaign for Talos:
https://www.crowdsupply.com/raptor-computing-systems/talos-secure-workstatio...
It's notable that you've raised as much in pledges in about ten days as the EOMA68 campaign raised within its entire funding window, but then again, you're attempting to raise twenty times that amount or so.
What you're offering is largely beyond my computing budget, but I hope you manage to meet your target. Looking at the product pledges, it's clear that some demand is there, particularly when four- and five-figure dollar amounts are involved!
Paul
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On 10/24/2016 05:38 PM, Paul Boddie wrote:
On Monday 4. April 2016 17.06.23 Timothy Pearson wrote:
=== POWER ===
IBM has recently released their high-performance POWER8 architecture for third party licensing, and has also released a small treasure trove of firmware and documentation for these devices. POWER is the only architecture currently competitive with Intel in terms of raw performance, and boots using a fully FOSS firmware with no DRM antifeatures embedded. The primary disadvantage of power is cost, as it is currently targeted at the server and datacenter markets. We are attempting to bring POWER to the high-end workstation market in a FOSS-friendly form via the Talos™ Secure Workstation, but need additional interest to make this a reality: https://raptorengineeringinc.com/TALOS/prerelease.php
Having seen the EOMA68 crowdfunding campaign get funded on Crowd Supply, it was interesting to see you proceed with a rather more ambitious campaign for Talos:
https://www.crowdsupply.com/raptor-computing-systems/talos-secure-workstatio...
It's notable that you've raised as much in pledges in about ten days as the EOMA68 campaign raised within its entire funding window, but then again, you're attempting to raise twenty times that amount or so.
What you're offering is largely beyond my computing budget, but I hope you manage to meet your target. Looking at the product pledges, it's clear that some demand is there, particularly when four- and five-figure dollar amounts are involved!
Thank you for the encouragement! We would really like to get these powerful development tools into the hands of people working on developing next-generation libre software, as that is really where they are needed.
I would also like to briefly highlight the SSH access pledge levels for this campaign. If you can't afford this first generation Talos™ machine, but still want to try out POWER8, this is a good way to both get direct experience with the POWER architecture and help define the future of powerful libre-friendly computing in the process.
- -- Timothy Pearson Raptor Engineering +1 (415) 727-8645 (direct line) +1 (512) 690-0200 (switchboard) https://www.raptorengineering.com