Pet_Ant
4 days ago
If stuff like the Raptor Talos can exist, surely the community can come together to support a company building an x86-64 motherboard that is completely binary-blob free...
amluto
3 days ago
The UEFI shells are generally built from open source upstream code. IMO the real issue is that there is something quite wrong with a security model that thinks it’s a problem that someone can run a UEFI shell and modify memory but does not consider it a problem that one can boot their favorite Windows or Linux kernel and act as LocalSystem or root.
estimator7292
4 days ago
There is a very, very good reason we don't have homebrew x86 boards. They're incredibly difficult and expensive to design, produce, and verify. Modern hardware has crazy high clock rates and even tighter timing tolerances. Beyond that, you have to convince whichever OEM to sell you the chipset in small quantities. And then you have to write miles of drivers and firmware and a BIOS.
And then you need to acquire and test every combination of CPU and RAM that any customer might conceivably use, then patch your miles of firmware to support each chip.
Oh and also you have to ensure your firmware can never, ever fail in such a way that cuts off fans or cranks up CPU voltage.
It's an incredibly involved process, which is why only big companies have the resources to pull it off. It's not impossible for a community board to be made, but it's something that would take years of work and a lot of money.
Pet_Ant
3 days ago
But don't most of the design issues apply to Talos as well?
And if it's security focussed, I think it's acceptable to say "It's AM4 (not 5), and only works with this RAM brand with these times and costs 5 times as much". It's a niche, and when people are into a niche they take the tradeoffs they get.
sidewndr46
3 days ago
there are a bunch of presentations from Bryan Cantrill of Oxide computing explaining why this is difficult to do.