The POWER8 Libre System Looks Set To Fail, Now There's An AMD Libre System Effort

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The POWER8 Libre System Looks Set To Fail, Now There's An AMD Libre System Effort

It doesn't look like the Talos Secure Workstation will see the light of day with it's crowdfunding campaign ending this week and it's coming up more than three million dollars short of its financing goal. Now there's another effort to offer a libre system but using off-the-shelf x86 hardware...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=No-Talos-Now-AMD-Libre-Effort

[tuxlovesyou]

This is kind of sad. I really wanted one

[darkbasic]

They are *very* good at chosing bad timings: first time with Power 9 at the doors and now this... Please wait for Ryzen or it will fail once again.

[Holograph]

They are *very* good at chosing bad timings: first time with Power 9 at the doors and now this... Please wait for Ryzen or it will fail once again.

It'll fail no matter what CPU they use if those are the prices they charge. Wasted effort.

[Michael]

They are *very* good at chosing bad timings: first time with Power 9 at the doors and now this... Please wait for Ryzen or it will fail once again.

Ryzen isn't going to have fuilly-open Coreboot/Libreboot support.

[Serafean]

Ryzen isn't going to have fuilly-open Coreboot/Libreboot support.

Indeed, and here is the reason : https://libreboot.org/faq/#amdpsp
No more open top modern platforms out there

[wdb974]

One can hope only such a workstation will be possible one day with an ARM chip. Or maybe that already exists?

[edwaleni]

I understand wanting to use off the shelf and accessible hardware for Libre, but I would start small and build your way up. You can't create a Libre ecosystem and evangelize by starting as close to the top as possible. (though i understand why they would do this). Took years for Pi to reach mass acceptance, I would see Libre platforms the same way. Start small and cheap, work up from there. Most of these mass produced boards are evolutions of prior work to keep the costs down and the profits up. If embracing the D16 is where the evolution starts, so be it, so don't be stunned if no one jumps right away because of it.

[schmidtbag]

They are *very* good at chosing bad timings: first time with Power 9 at the doors and now this... Please wait for Ryzen or it will fail once again.

There's a reason why these older platforms are used: No hardware manufacturer is going to supply anything fully open-source as long as what they're trying to keep hidden hasn't been accomplished or exceeded by all competitors. Companies like IBM and AMD probably don't care about giving away information about older hardware that they will likely never again see any significant sales in. So, I'm guessing these companies figure they might as well make the most of their design expenses and give away just enough information to appease people who want a fully open platform, at least in a software perspective.

[M@GOid]

There's a reason why these older platforms are used: No hardware manufacturer is going to supply anything fully open-source as long as what they're trying to keep hidden hasn't been accomplished or exceeded by all competitors. Companies like IBM and AMD probably don't care about giving away information about older hardware that they will likely never again see any significant sales in. So, I'm guessing these companies figure they might as well make the most of their design expenses and give away just enough information to appease people who want a fully open platform, at least in a software perspective.

I have no doubt that a company like Intel, AMD, IBM and Nvidia have any problem in disassembly and reverse-engineer every single bit of their competitors products. To me, the opensource thing are only a burden to them (see how much time AMD take to release documentation. That is money spent). So if it did not turn in a profit or market advantage, they will not opensource anything.