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On 05/03/2018 06:02 PM, ron minnich wrote:
On Thu, May 3, 2018 at 1:20 PM Timothy Pearson <tpearson@raptorengineering.com mailto:tpearson@raptorengineering.com> wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 I think I was being a bit pessimistic / too careful here. We're close to getting the docs publicly released, but that doesn't help anyone wanting access right now, which is why I mentioned the other route. IBM's committed to getting the documentation released, they're just making sure that what they release is actually correct for the products it covers. It might make sense to get our "working group" together over the next few weeks, by which time the documentation should be available in public form. Are you interested in joining? :-)of course, but not until those docs are freed up.
We're getting there. First manual to be released is the processor user guide. More to follow, including register documentation, in around a week.
Users guide:
https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/File:POWER9_um_OpenPOWER_v20GA_09APR2018_pub....
Context: I've been trying for 2 years now to get OPAL released under dual gpl2 licensing with the current apache2 license, apache2 and gpl2 are not compatible, so we'd be in a bit of a mess should we use OPAL code in coreboot, and it would be easiest if we were able to use some of that code.
The first response from IBM was "why do you think you need coreboot?" I worked through that, and there was agreement in the end it ought to happen, said agreement reached about 2 years ago. Stuff Would Happen, I was told. After that, silence.
We've reignited this. It's underway. :-)
This is pretty much par for the course with Power. In 1990 I spent two years getting an agreement that would allow me to .... get more agreements.
We've plowed through this already and are at the action point. For the most part, just let me know what you need and I'll see if we can get it published.
So close doesn't count. Once I see the kind of docs I need to see, not requiring a clickwrap, and covering all aspects of every chip on your board, I'm in: I'll order a board. Until then, I can't really do much.
Is the NIC an issue? There are several people working on REing the hardware with some great progress [1][2], but there's really no way to get Broadcom to ever release official documentation. Everything else on the libre-friendly non-SAS version either has docs available or we are close to getting them published.
Thanks for your efforts on Power!
No problem! We still consider Power the best path forward for powerful libre systems at this point, getting really tired of the other vendors actively working against efforts to create open firmware (this includes SiFive at this point).
Will keep you posted as we get more docs published online, but thought you and the others here might at least be interested in the users guide.
ron
[1] https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/BCM5719 [2] IRC discussions on #talos-workstation
- -- Timothy Pearson Raptor Engineering +1 (415) 727-8645 (direct line) +1 (512) 690-0200 (switchboard) https://www.raptorengineering.com