/tech/ - Technology★

It's not open source and it require proprietary binary blobs.

>>961522

The schematics are publicly available, but could luck fabricating one unless you've got several thousand dollars invested in the necessary equipment and a cleanroom.

I'd like to get one to dick around with, but alas, I am a poorfag and can't justify the fifty buck price tag.

>>961563

>The schematics are publicly available, but could luck fabricating one unless you've got several thousand dollars

Several thousand kek. Gg noobs.

>>961591

There are plenty of fabs who will serve you for less than $10.000. And I am pretty sure I could build a microfab out of used an improvised equipment for a similar amount of money, as long as you did not care about efficiency or environmental (or personal) protection.

>>961605

Yeah, that seems like it could be doable on with the level of funds a moderately successful corporation could get you. Not quite worth it your the only one using what you produce, but I'm sure someone could make enough money producing itx or atx boards for those interested in using RISC-V. We might see something similar to the Talos II pop up for RISC-V in the near future if things go well.

>>961563

>The schematics are publicly available

Irrelevant, the CPU itself isn't libre and critical components such as the memory controller require binary blobs.

OpenPOWER is more libre.

>>961617

>OpenPOWER is more libre.

OpenPOWER is only libre if you pay $100k+ /year and sign an NDA.

>>961636

>OpenPOWER is only libre if you pay $100k+ /year

Its only like $1000 for individuals, also last time I checked the only modern system which doesn't need any binary blobs to run is the Talos since the source code for all the firmware is available on github.

>>961638

You didn't check worth a damn. There's ARM SBCs that can run fine without any blobs. The only problem is you won't get to use the GPU, but that's not necessarily needed in all cases (network server, etc.) and besides I've been running OpenBSD without any GPU for the past decade, since the vesa X server (and later on the wsfb server) are much safer. To understand why, you have to watch this talk: 30c3-5499-en-X_Security_h264-iprod.mp4

I can't be bothered to find the url again, so just do a web search.

>>961643

>You didn't check worth a damn. There's ARM SBCs that can run fine without any blobs.

Really? I was under the impression that they needed at least a few binary blobs for the bootloader and firmware...

>The only problem is you won't get to use the GPU

and there's the catch...

>>961648

There's several boards that don't need non-free junk to boot. Some listed here, but allegedly RPi3 is also in that category so the page seems not well maintained:

https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/single-board-computers

>>961585

>Fifty buck

LMAO, you wish.

the HiFive board cost a bit over 1k + 2k for the IO board

>>961710

I just glanced at the OP. Disnt really look at the pics. Thought he meant the HiFive 1, not the HiFive Unleashed. The HiFive 1 is $59

>>961716

Why such a a big price difference?

>>961725

One's a tiny computer for IoT, one 32-bit core at 300 MHz or something, the other has one of those cores as well as four 64-bit 1.5 GHz cores plus a bunch of high speed IO.

>>961725

The hifive1 is basically just a RISC-V arduino

>>961975

>>961716

>>961976

Dorsn't explain the huge price difference

>>962044

I'd say 50% is due to it being a limited run of a more complex chip at a more expensive node with a more expensive board and more expensive components.

The other 50% is jews.

>>961517 (OP)

The ISA is opensource the CPU itself is proprietary.

>>961638

The Talos uses a proprietary CPU, only the ISA is open.

>>962044

over half the cost comes from having 8GB of RAM during the current DDR price fixing bubble

>>962108

>The Talos uses a proprietary CPU, only the ISA is open.

OpenPOWER membership grants access to everything including verilog and RTL for the Power9 CPU. The whole point of the foundation is to further the proliferation of the PowerISA and having reference implementations available for members so they can easily develop Power-based ASICs greatly aids in this. Membership also provides things like system reference designs which is how Raptor managed to get their product to market quickly given the size of their team.

IBM has also made every piece of documentation relevant to the end user publicly available including a complete description of all the registers on the Power9 CPUs. There is enough publicly available documentation for the Power9 CPUs that if someone wanted to they could create all the required CPU firmware from scratch unlike the HiFive.

>>962511

Do you need to spam the whole fucking board with this shit?

>>962044

Dumbass

>>962396

Why so much ram anyway? seems like over kill for a dev board

>>962555

> including verilog and RTL for the Power9 CPU.

citation needed

>>962555

So it's closed unless you buy your way into membership?

>>963252

Free software does not mean free beer anon.

>>963272

I thought it was "muh communism" tho? What about "muh 4 fundamental freedoms"? Isn't one of them to be able to sell any free software I'd like? Can you freetards fucking decide already?

>>963279

RMS philosophy is just one interpretation of what free software is. You could open your source but not allow anyone to modify/resell it, open your source completely and allow anyone to close/resell it however they want (like the cuck you are, yes you are the AT&T's bitch you BSD cuck) or if you change your mind maybe go balls deep instead and use AGPL, the true communism license.

>>963305

GPL users are cucks. BSD developers are cucks. Whos getting cucked is the difference.

>>963309

GPL cucks can receive contributions back from the companies, albeit forcefully. BSD cucks on the other hand literally works

>for free

and allows anyone to have sex with their wife. You don't see Apple opening their source completely and contributing back to FreeBSD do you? I'm aware they opened up some of their software but most of it is locked up from the eyes of public forever.

>>963312

GPL cucks have to give their shit back. BSD users can fork that shit and license cant do shit about it.

>>963312

>most of it is locked up from the eyes of public forever.

why would you want that gay code anyways?