On Wed, Aug 21, 2019 at 01:57:14PM +1000, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
On Tue, Aug 20, 2019 at 09:50:05PM -0300, Punk wrote:
https://www.raptorcs.com/content/BK1B01/intro.html
A single Blackbird™ µATX mainboard One 4-core IBM POWER9 CPU
seems like the IBM processors don't have explicit hardware malware (aka intel ME, amd PSP) in them.
"you can audit and modify any portion of the open source firmware on the Blackbird™ mainboard, all the way down to the CPU microcode"
Impressive.
[paywalled for a week - or is that 2?] : OpenPOWER opens further https://lwn.net/Articles/796796/ … Multiple presentations outlined a major change in the openness of the OpenPOWER instruction set architecture (ISA), along with various related hardware and software pieces; in short, OpenPOWER can be used by compliant products without paying royalties and with a grant of the patents that IBM holds on it. In addition, the foundation will be moving under the aegis of the Linux Foundation. Blemings also wrote about the changes in a blog post https://openpowerfoundation.org/the-next-step-in-the-openpower-foundation-jo... at the foundation web site. To set the stage for the announcements to come, he played a promotional video (which can be found in the post) that gave an overview of the foundation and the accomplishments of the OpenPOWER architecture, which includes underlying the two most powerful supercomputers in the world today. https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/06/ibm-built-three-of-the-top-11-supercom... … Softcore impl. going onto github soon... MicroPython mostly ported... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_microprocessor https://openpowerfoundation.org/ … In a "birds of a feather" (BoF) session held later that morning, Blanchard and OpenPower Foundation president Mendy Furmanek answered questions about the announcements. In particular, they filled in some information about the compliance side of the equation. It is important not to fracture the ecosystem with incompatible implementations, Furmanek said. But not all products will want or need to implement the entire ISA. [Mendy Furmanek] For now, the foundation has identified four separate tiers of instructions. In order to get the patent rights for a product, it will have to comply with one of those four tiers, but it can add instructions from the higher-level tiers as well. The levels are: scalar fixed point (what MicroWatt is based on), floating point, Linux server, and AIX server. There is a compliance workgroup within the foundation that will determine the compliance levels. In addition, changes to the ISA will only require a majority vote of a workgroup made up of foundation members if they are backward compatible; changes that are not backward compatible require a unanimous vote. Blanchard said that they did not want to have too many options, like what RISC-V has done https://lwn.net/Articles/749185/ with optional instructions and such. The Linux server level is more complicated, he said, but Linux can run on the simpler levels, which may be appropriate for embedded applications. It would not take a huge amount of effort to take something like MicroWatt and turn it into a chip that could run Linux, he said. Furmanek said that the foundation would like to see contributions from members and non-members alike. The AIX level is effectively set up to give IBM a place to continue building out on its POWER roadmap if the community decides it wants to go in a different direction. But POWER has a robust and unified ecosystem, she said, and IBM wants to ensure that continues. The patent rights will come when building actual hardware. There is no indemnification for patents that others might assert against OpenPOWER, but there is a defensive termination clause. …