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  • Open hardware

    From Simon Clubley@21:1/5 to John Dallman on Thu Apr 18 18:37:14 2024
    On 2024-04-18, John Dallman <jgd@cix.co.uk> wrote:

    As for RISC-V, who is offering RISC-V 64-bit servers or cloud instances
    as of now? I count Scaleway, since early March, but they're bare metal servers, *not* Linux ready to run. RISC-V has a lot of hype, somewhat questionable potential, and not very much in service that's suitable for
    VMS.


    RISC-V only supplies part of the solution. There's only limited utility
    to the CPU architecture being open when the rest of the hardware, GPU,
    onboard memory setup, etc, is still behind heavily restricted datasheets
    and manuals.

    What I would really like to see is a _completely_ open board, including
    GPU and peripheral/memory documentation, with the documentation written
    in enough detail that you could in theory write your own OS from scratch without ever having to sign a single NDA or beg for access to some
    restricted documentation.

    Simon.

    --
    Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
    Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Chris Townley@21:1/5 to Simon Clubley on Thu Apr 18 20:20:27 2024
    On 18/04/2024 19:37, Simon Clubley wrote:
    On 2024-04-18, John Dallman <jgd@cix.co.uk> wrote:

    As for RISC-V, who is offering RISC-V 64-bit servers or cloud instances
    as of now? I count Scaleway, since early March, but they're bare metal
    servers, *not* Linux ready to run. RISC-V has a lot of hype, somewhat
    questionable potential, and not very much in service that's suitable for
    VMS.


    RISC-V only supplies part of the solution. There's only limited utility
    to the CPU architecture being open when the rest of the hardware, GPU, onboard memory setup, etc, is still behind heavily restricted datasheets
    and manuals.

    What I would really like to see is a _completely_ open board, including
    GPU and peripheral/memory documentation, with the documentation written
    in enough detail that you could in theory write your own OS from scratch without ever having to sign a single NDA or beg for access to some
    restricted documentation.

    Simon.


    Take a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qDGV6LTOnk
    However Jeff Geerling quotes the company as saying don't buy it!

    --
    Chris

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Dan Cross@21:1/5 to clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org- on Fri Apr 19 12:52:13 2024
    In article <uvrp8p$2daa7$1@dont-email.me>,
    Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:
    On 2024-04-18, John Dallman <jgd@cix.co.uk> wrote:

    As for RISC-V, who is offering RISC-V 64-bit servers or cloud instances
    as of now? I count Scaleway, since early March, but they're bare metal
    servers, *not* Linux ready to run. RISC-V has a lot of hype, somewhat
    questionable potential, and not very much in service that's suitable for
    VMS.


    RISC-V only supplies part of the solution. There's only limited utility
    to the CPU architecture being open when the rest of the hardware, GPU, >onboard memory setup, etc, is still behind heavily restricted datasheets
    and manuals.

    What I would really like to see is a _completely_ open board, including
    GPU and peripheral/memory documentation, with the documentation written
    in enough detail that you could in theory write your own OS from scratch >without ever having to sign a single NDA or beg for access to some
    restricted documentation.

    Yup, this. It's an incredibly hard problem.

    Not only for OEMs, but for the component vendors themselves.
    Consider that many are buying IP from third party component
    vendors that themselves have firmware blobs that they distribute.
    Setting up things like IO buses is thorny when you need to do
    real signal processing to make it happen.

    - Dan C.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)