Ampere Making Progress On Open-Source Firmware For Their CPUs/Platform

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ampere Making Progress On Open-Source Firmware For Their CPUs/Platform

Ampere Computing with their 80-core Ampere Altra processors and Mount Jade reference platform continue making progress on open-source firmware support for interested parties...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ampere-OSS-FW-Progress-2021

[uid313]

This is great for cloud providers like Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft but it does not help me any. I still run proprietary firmware on my own computer. 😢

[torsionbar28]

This is great for cloud providers like Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft but it does not help me any. I still run proprietary firmware on my own computer. 😢

Of course. Big Tech is big and important, they always get what they want, and they deserve open firmware. You do not. You are small unimportant consumer, your only job is to give them your money and be thankful for whatever they give you in return.

[kmare]

For a moment I actually thought it was about the NVIDIA Ampere GPUs, but then I realized it's the wrong universe....

[kvuj]

This is great for cloud providers like Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft but it does not help me any. I still run proprietary firmware on my own computer. 😢

But you can buy a desktop with an ampere CPU. (For a price)

An alternative to Power for open source desktops sounds really nice.

[phoron]

Well, good for all they may publish as free software. But that "firmware be open source (code) or freely distributable (binaries)" sounds terrible. Instead of just sticking to free software, OCP just invent their definition for something that's "open source or not". Just as exciting as a label in your cookie bag saying "all ingredients come from bio agriculture or edible chemicals".

[edwaleni]

For a moment I actually thought it was about the NVIDIA Ampere GPUs, but then I realized it's the wrong universe....

I too couldn't figure out why NVidia would code word a major product release after a company that already makes CPU's. Later i found out that NVidia is an investor in Ampere and they bought ARM, who also had a stake in Ampere.

[microcode]

Next time perhaps the open source firmware should be the first and only official firmware for it lol.