Hey Youness, hey Todd,
On 23.12.2017 04:06, Youness Alaoui wrote:
I think there is a plan to move librems to non-x86 architecture eventually (considering that RYF is our long term plan, there is no choice in moving out of x86 eventually),
that would be great.
I think the efforts on the risc-v front are the most promising and I think that's where the true competition to x86 will be, but to be honest, I don't really follow, understand or know much of anything that happens in the hardware space since I'm a software guy at heart (i.e: all I know is that x86, ARM, PPC and Risc-V use different instruction sets).
RISC-V is just a different ISA. Ok, it's free, but as it's BSD licen- sed, silicon vendors can build around it whatever they want. Delivering an owner-controllable platform is not in the scope of an ISA anyway. So RISC-V can't magically change the game by definition.
I hear a lot about PPC (with Talos for example), but I don't think PPC is as open as Risc-v (ISA or something). All I know about PPC really is that it was fun to reverse engineer during my PS3 days :) Anyways, as far as I know, for risc-v, it's not there yet, so we're waiting for that to be ready for the masses before moving to it. I have absolutely no idea if it's "close" or if it's really a long term plan for risc-v to be able to compete with x86 in terms of performance/power usage/features/etc...
It doesn't matter how close somebody else is. If I understand Purism correctly, the idea is not to jump into a market of owner-controllable devices once it exists, but to pioneer that market. The only thing that matters is what you buy *today*. The choice of i.MX for the Librem 5 is a move into the right direction. i.MX6 was the best thing you can get for mobile devices, IMHO (controllable and publicly documented). If you get the i.MX8 for it (and it turns out to be as good documented), all you have to do is to ask for a board with the most powerful version that physically fits a Librem 13 [1]. Then you can offer trustworthy hardware vs. performance and let your customers chose.
There are ofc alternatives to i.MX. Most use a graphics core where free drivers are a problem. Though, a proprietary driver in the OS is far less troublesome than blobs in your firmware (or the ME). And you might find something that is already available and delivers higher performance than the announced i.MX8 versions.
Once you buy a reasonable quantity of an SoC, you can ask if they can make the next generation with RISC-V instead of ARM. Unlikely to get that soon, but way more likely than Intel changing their silicon for you.
Nico
[1] I'm convinced that this is easily doable. At least compared to the effort you already put in liberating the unliberatable. If the i.MX8 turns out to be as controllable and well documented as the i.MX6, you'd be catapulted towards the end of your freedom roadmap.
On 23.12.2017 11:39, Nico Huber wrote:
[1] I'm convinced that this is easily doable. At least compared to the effort you already put in liberating the unliberatable. If the i.MX8 turns out to be as controllable and well documented as the i.MX6, you'd be catapulted towards the end of your freedom roadmap.
Now that I've looked at your roadmap again, there's a flaw at the beginning: AUIU, at least Acer, Dell, HP and Lenovo sell products that are on par with yours (Chromebooks). Actually you're basing your firmware on their investments into it. So it seems unfair to list them there. Some even sell ARM devices that are far ahead (in terms of freedom and owner-controllability; not in your roadmap because that has a very weird order).
Nico
On 12/23/2017 11:54 AM, Nico Huber wrote:
On 23.12.2017 11:39, Nico Huber wrote:
[1] I'm convinced that this is easily doable. At least compared to the effort you already put in liberating the unliberatable. If the i.MX8 turns out to be as controllable and well documented as the i.MX6, you'd be catapulted towards the end of your freedom roadmap.
Now that I've looked at your roadmap again, there's a flaw at the beginning: AUIU, at least Acer, Dell, HP and Lenovo sell products that are on par with yours (Chromebooks). Actually you're basing your firmware on their investments into it. So it seems unfair to list them there. Some even sell ARM devices that are far ahead (in terms of freedom and owner-controllability; not in your roadmap because that has a very weird order).
Nico
Meh, chromebooks aren't exactly powerful systems anyway. Also I don't know other ARM devices that are more free than ARM chromebooks (again not really powerful systems).
-Alberto
On Sat, 2017-12-23 at 11:39 +0100, Nico Huber wrote:
If you get the i.MX8 for it (and it turns out to be as good documented), all you have to do is to ask for a board with the most powerful version that physically fits a Librem 13 [1]. Then you can offer trustworthy hardware vs. performance and let your customers chose.
"all you have to do" is simplifying the "all we have to do" a little.
But let me confirm our top-level plans as it relates...
The Librem 5 is the catalyst for us to produce a motherboard that fits into the Librem 13/15 ... etc. So that part is spot-on.
We will then offer: Librem 13 i7 Librem 13 i.mx8 Librem 15 i7 Librem 15 i.mx8 etc.
This will probably be able to happen in 2019. The "all we have to do" is (not even limited to) design, prototype, test, modify, tool, fund, fabricate, productize, develop, inventory, quality control, ship, publish, and support.
There are ofc alternatives to i.MX. Most use a graphics core where free drivers are a problem. Though, a proprietary driver in the OS is far less troublesome than blobs in your firmware (or the ME).
I am not convinced this is the consensus. For one critical test that this would fail: PureOS being listed as an FSF endorsed distribution = no proprietary drivers in the OS (plus a lot of other things, but that is the only relevant part to the comparison).
So our approach I believe is still the best approach. Start with hardware people want, work to free it (NOTE: This is how GNU started in OS freedom, and I believe that was the best approach there as well). Since we have to invest in i.mx8 for the phone, then we can cross- polinate that investment into a lesser expensive, lesser performance, RYF compatible laptop board that fits into our existing cases.
Once you buy a reasonable quantity of an SoC, you can ask if they can make the next generation with RISC-V instead of ARM. Unlikely to get that soon, but way more likely than Intel changing their silicon for you.
Moving to RISC-V is on the "we will evaluate and would love to do it." roadmap, and we will continue to follow the progress there to produce a device that is RISC-V when it crosses the threshold of "stable available product". Part of that determination is based on the talented coreboot community, talking to Ron about this at the last coreboot conference helped guage the tests for "when" this will be able to be put into a product.
Nico
[1] I'm convinced that this is easily doable.
"easily doable" see above.
Todd.
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Alberto Bursi -
Nico Huber -
Todd Weaver