advertising - open (sort of) hardware

[Zenaan Harkness]

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-journey
  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-supercomputers-in-the-world-today.html
  …


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. …