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Comment by dlmetcalf | Hacker News Reader

I hope these guys get lots of orders and prices fall (Raptor's Talos Secure Workstation): https://www.raptorengineering.com/TALOS/prerelease.php

With Google having ported all their software to Power8, I'm looking forward to more economies of scale kicking on.

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I hope they get sufficient preorders so they can start manufacturing it.

I currently have a 125W TDP AMD processor with "just" 8 cores, looking forward to a Power8 workstation that should have 64 logical CPU cores at 130W TDP [1] and avoids the Intel ME/AMD PSP trap.

[1] https://www.raptorengineering.com/TALOS/faq.php

It looks great, except it has a ASpeed AST2400 BMC on the board which seems to do video and usb over IP etc (edit: eg it ties into networking, pci, usb, memory)...

Unless the firmware running on the BMC is going to be open source, I fail to see how it helps.

Does this cover your concerns?

  Open-toolchain FPGAs
  Blob-free operation
  - Fully libre (open-source) IBM OPAL primary firmware w/ PetitBoot interface
  - Fully libre (open-source) OpenBMC secondary (IPMI / OoBM) firmware
  NO signing keys preventing firmware modification

Gets most of the way there, though I'm confused as to the wording on the BSC. "Fully libre OpenBMC _secondary_ firmware". Still slightly worried as to the meaning of Secondary firmware; almost makes me think the BSC has non-libre _primary_ firmware on there too.

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