It Looks Like Raptor Is Gearing Up To Release A New Open-Source POWER System

[madscientist159]

Why does anybody care about POWER architecture when IBM has sold all its foundries and its only partnership, Globalfoundries, has abandoned the leading edge?

Somebody please explain to me how this architecture is not a dead end. I'm all for competition, but that is going to come from AMD.

All this intricate comment detail.... it's all irrelevant if the backing superpower of the architecture has been neutered for the future.

AMD owns no foundries. IBM is continuing developing the leading edge with another foundry or foundries. The first part of your post seems to be FUD, no disrespect intended.

Here are my personal thoughts on AMD. This is not an official stance, just my $0.02:

There has been mention by an AMD engineer on these forums that AMD is unable to sell computer components (CPUs, etc.) that are owner-controlled. for various reasons. This dovetails nicely with other public AMD statements and their overall actions with regard to the PSP. If you don't care about the PSP and the AGESA binary blobs, plus the UEFI stack and proprietary BMC, or even running a custom OS kernel*, then by all means AMD may be the right choice for you. For many other people, this is an unacceptable loss of control of general purpose computing, and that is part of why ARM, POWER, and RISC-V have been gaining traction very rapidly in those circles.

*About the latter: when you go into a Best Buy or similar, do you see AMD and Intel hardware being sold under their respective labels? No, you see the "Microsoft Shop" and the "Google Shop", each with their own data-slurping software preinstalled and in some cases very difficult to remove. By all appearances that the future of this particular architecture. With Linux userspace for Windows now available, even the argument of keeping custom OS capability for running a Linux application is probably going away. There is zero guarantee that you will even continue to be able to install a random operating system on a consumer-class x86 machine.

[madscientist159]

madscientist159
thank you very much for the replies this project seems what i was waiting for, i have some other question if you don't mind
a) for the storage will be avalaible a pcie m.2 socket for faster ssd or just the sata 3?
b) about the graphics, for fullhd video the integrated video is enough? integrated video output are hdmi and/or DP or vga only like talos? i really hope will have hdmi and dp allowing to use latest monitor and also multimonitor setup
c) a termal paste is required or suggested for the cpu? or do you provide a custom solution? i'm asking this because i saw a video about talos 2 and i saw no termal paste
d) normal PSU and their cable are ok to use for the system, or some other custom solution is needed?
e) what's the correct procedure to check and update system firmware and bios?
f) about the eth contest do you know if someone are working on it, do you have some info you can share about progress?
g) what about ram? will be possible to use the non-ecc cheapest ram?

a.) SATA would be the main focus, though you can always install an OCuLink card and get 4 NVMe endpoints. Raptor sells those cards right now for use with the current Talos offerings.
b.) We have reports of video working fine on the integrated display controller. For some reason Xorg tries to enable Glamor, which slows things down dramatically, but disabling Glamor yields a very usable full HD experience.
c.) 4 and 8 core CPUs do not need thermal paste or pads with the 3U heatsinks. Other combinations ship with an indium thermal pad; this is reusable and provides excellent thermal contact.
d.) Absolutely. You can use pretty much any PSU on the market today, standard ATX w/ EPS for Talos, standard ATX for the new board.
e.) https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Firmw...ade_Quickstart
f.) Yes, people are working on it with around 1/3 of the RE work done. See https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Project_Ortega .
g.) Unfortunately only ECC registered RAM is supported; this is recommended anyway to mitigate rowhammer and similar issues inherent to the design of DRAM in general.

[microcode]

As I mentioned above we do provide schematics, etc. with the hardware. Not sure where the rumor that we don't got started, but providing full schematics is something we have done from day 1.

The comment I was replying to said that there were no board schematics, misinformation travels fast. Thanks for clearing that up.

[bridgman]

An AMD engineer has stated publicly on these forums that AMD is not allowed to sell computers that are owner-controlled.

I hope that AMD engineer is not me being mis-quoted again. I am not suggesting you mis-quoted but a lot of people accidentally help mis-quotes to spread.

I can't imagine anyone from AMD making that statement. Anyways, we don't sell computers and AFAIK never have.

What I have said is that computer manufacturers (who specify and purchase parts from us and from our competitors) have to comply with industry restrictions if they want to offer features like convenient BluRay or Netflix support, that those restrictions conflict to some extent with the idea of being fully owner-controlled, and that computer manufacturers include DRM requirements in the specifications that we and our competitors need to meet in order to sell our components.

IBM no longer sells into the consumer market, so they have the luxury of not having to include DRM considerations in their CPU designs. We don't have that luxury right now (our desktop parts and server parts share enough technology to make that impractical) but given time and R&D budgets we could certainly have customized offerings with different security models.

We do this today in our semi-custom business, of course, but those products happen because single (large) customers are able to fund the relatively high cost of customizing a modern processor. That doesn't help individual users, however - but in the meantime IBM & Raptor have a nice solution that is fairly unique in the market in terms of owner control.

[ssokolow]

What I have said is that computer manufacturers (who specify and purchase parts from us and from our competitors) have to comply with industry restrictions if they want to offer features like convenient BluRay or Netflix support, that those restrictions conflict to some extent with the idea of being fully owner-controlled, and that computer manufacturers include DRM requirements in the specifications that we and our competitors need to meet in order to sell our components.

IBM no longer sells into the consumer market, so they have the luxury of not having to include DRM considerations in their CPU designs. We don't have that luxury right now (our desktop parts and server parts share enough technology to make that impractical) but given time and R&D budgets we could certainly have customized offerings with different security models.

We do this today in our semi-custom business, of course, but those products happen because single (large) customers are able to fund the relatively high cost of customizing a modern processor. That doesn't help individual users, however - but in the meantime IBM & Raptor have a nice solution that is fairly unique in the market in terms of owner control.

Fair enough, but it does also mean that, when my current Athlon II X2 270 dies, I'll probably be going for an Intel chip for the machine I game on since I have yet to hear of anyone managing to create an analogue to me_cleaner for the AMD TrustZone core/PSP/Secure Processor/whatever you're calling it these days.

[madscientist159]

Fair enough, but it does also mean that, when my current Athlon II X2 270 dies, I'll probably be going for an Intel chip for the machine I game on since I have yet to hear of anyone managing to create an analogue to me_cleaner for the AMD TrustZone core/PSP/Secure Processor/whatever you're calling it these days.

You are aware that ME Cleaner leaves the ME kernel and part of its userspace intact and running at all times, correct? In a "cleaned" state, it's probably similar in active functionality to the PSP.

bridgman I've edited the post above to be a bit more clear in terms of what is actually being claimed. While I understand the economic concerns, the simple fact is that there is a very high barrier that effectively prevents AMD from selling owner controlled CPUs and related hardware. A few years back we attempted to contact AMD via multiple channels to see if a custom PSP-free server SKU was possible, but received no response. It doesn't really matter if the barrier is economic, legal, technical, or simply executive fiat -- the fact remains that, to the best of my knowledge, there are no owner-controllable AMD parts on the market now nor any plans for them in the future. Even if we started out with GPUs it would be a step forward, but that also seems to be going nowhere unfortunately.

[freespirit]

madscientist159
the oculink is really expensive for my use and budget, any other pcie to m.2 adaptor like this one will work too?
https://www.amazon.com/EZDIY-FAB-Exp...CI+Express+M.2

the firmware guide i think is ok for heavy tech people, i understood nothing, is it planned a newbie step by step guide or an easyer firmware update metod like a kind of script to launch on linux, or a file to download in an usb and use it inside a bios, something like x86 bios update i mean

could you share if the video output connector is vga or something else?

about glamor is it possible to make in your wiki an how to guide to disable it? because as before i found nothing on web i can understand
or maybe just speak/work with xorg mantainers to disable it as default on power machines should be even better

you told the sata do not need blob controller, is this a news from the upcoming prodouct? because i saw on talos 2 is needed to buy proprietary Microsemi PM8068 SAS controller

[ssokolow]

You are aware that ME Cleaner leaves the ME kernel and part of its userspace intact and running at all times, correct? In a "cleaned" state, it's probably similar in active functionality to the PSP.

Barring fragile UEFI implementations that need ME Cleaner to be run in a reduced mode, it does two things, neither of which I've seen an AMD equivalent for:

First, it sets the HAP (High Assurance Platform) flag which, if it doesn't actually do what it says (which is described elsewhere as disabling the ME), could potentially get Intel sued by an enterprise or government customer with very deep pockets.

Second, it takes advantage of the following characteristics of the ME firmware's design to do what, as far as can be observed, hangs the ME after the bring-up completes:

1. Each firmware module is its own partition, they are signed but the partition table isn't, and the system doesn't check for their presence or integrity until the moment when it tries to load them.
2. The reset watchdog isn't enabled until after the BUP (bring-up) partition has done its job.
3. To ease the edit-compile-test cycle, BUP, POLICY (secondary initialization and helper APIs), KERNEL, the network stack, and various other modules are separate partitions.

The PSP would be pretty useless if its default mode of operation were to start in a "we'll get sued if this isn't actually 'disabled' and we get caught" mode and, likewise, it'd also be pretty useless if its default mode of operation were to bring up the board, then die for lack of a kernel before reaching the "enable watchdog" mark.

I still intend to grab a cheap, used, pre-PSP Opteron if I can find one with a suitably low TDP (I have no air-conditioning and want something that can be cooled quietly) but, beyond that, as much as I hate Intel's business practices (eg. welching on their deal with AMD in the 386/486 era, fighting the OLPC XO because it wasn't intel-based, etc.), ME Cleaner is a killer feature.

[bridgman]

I've edited the post above to be a bit more clear in terms of what is actually being claimed.

Thanks, but the edited post is still incorrect. The most you can say is that the markets and products we are focusing on at the moment do not lend themselves to full owner control.

While I understand the economic concerns, the simple fact is that there is a very high barrier that effectively prevents AMD from selling owner controlled CPUs and related hardware. A few years back we attempted to contact AMD via multiple channels to see if a custom PSP-free server SKU was possible, but received no response.

The fact you didn't get a response is a different problem; probably best not to draw conclusions about our plans and products from that. Besides, I responded and we IM'ed (or emailed ?) back and forth about it, so I don't think you can say "no response".

It doesn't really matter if the barrier is economic, legal, technical, or simply executive fiat -- the fact remains that, to the best of my knowledge, there are no owner-controllable AMD parts on the market now nor any plans for them in the future.

I don't think there are any on the market today, but none of our competitors products (including POWER) are fully owner controlled either. You don't have access to any of the microcode that is built into the chip - this is shades of grey, not black and white.

You don't know our plans for the future, or at least I don't think you do

Even if we started out with GPUs it would be a step forward, but that also seems to be going nowhere unfortunately.

GPUs are the hardest, as I have explained multiple times, because of DRM requirements. The most likely first step would be a server CPU.

[madscientist159]

Thanks, but the edited post is still incorrect. The most you can say is that the markets and products we are focusing on at the moment do not lend themselves to full owner control.

I think it has been made very clear through AMD's official statements and actions (i.e. not extrapolating from your comments here) that AMD doesn't consider fully owner controlled parts economically viable. Combined with what is publicly known about the various third-party IP blocks inside current AMD offerings, let's just say that a lot of people would be surprised if AMD actually released something that could be owner controlled. As there is no public statement by AMD that owner controlled parts are even being considered, I will stand by my statement until shown otherwise. The last public statement on this topic was that the PSP is not able to be open sourced (this looks like security by obscurity, whether it was intended or not), and since then I've seen the PSP spread to more AMD products as a required IP block. If there's anything in AMD's public strategy / roadmap involving open firmware I have yet to see it.

The fact you didn't get a response is a different problem; probably best not to draw conclusions about our plans and products from that. Besides, I responded and we IM'ed (or emailed ?) back and forth about it, so I don't think you can say "no response".

The CPU platform decisions were made far before that time; I'm referencing communication that happened before you and I made initial contact . I do appreciate the communication in regard to GPUs, and would definitely like to discuss in earnest in the future if there is actually a commercial path forward to that goal.

I don't think there are any on the market today, but none of our competitors products (including POWER) are fully owner controlled either. You don't have access to any of the microcode that is built into the chip - this is shades of grey, not black and white.

That's a very unusual stance to take. Whatever microcode (to be clear, horizontal microcode and similar items, not horizontal microcode + executable code like the new normal in the x86 world) is inside an IBM CPU is baked into the silicon and, crucially, cannot be changed by anyone post-manufacture. Every mutable component on a POWER CPU is owner controlled, whereas most mutable components on an AMD CPU are AMD / vendor controlled.

You don't know our plans for the future, or at least I don't think you do

No, I don't. However it isn't hard to extrapolate from past actions over the past couple of years and several product generations.

GPUs are the hardest, as I have explained multiple times, because of DRM requirements. The most likely first step would be a server CPU.

Would AMD actually be able to match the level of openness of a POWER CPU, though? That's a very high bar to reach.