Hacker News Reader

Comment by wnoise | Hacker News Reader

The hook for this over other ones is that this is designed to have no binary blobs required, completely open and auditable firmware, etc. It's for people that care about security and are disgusted by the trash-fire that is the lowest levels of our computing stack.

https://secure.raptorengineering.com/TALOS/prerelease.php

View on HN

AFAIK all the OpenPower boxes use the same firmware, so why not buy the cheaper Supermicro ones?

And on a practical level we know that people who bleat about firmware blobs are not going to spend $6,000 to escape from them.

Hi, Timothy here from Raptor Engineering.

The lesser expensive servers do not use the same firmware as Talos™ or even the more expensive IBM systems. The cheaper machines reduce cost by using proprietary firmware components wherever possible, and by dropping as many features as the market will bear at the lower price point. This is not the market segment that Talos™ is aimed at.

I believe their point is that the segment this is aimed at might not exist. I suppose that's why it's a campaign :) I'd also be interested for $1-2k even, but not at new car prices.

Regarding the cost of non-consumer hardware, especially hardware in the $1k range, I encourage you to check out the presentation entitled "Talos™, OpenPOWER™, and the World Beyond x86" at https://www.crowdsupply.com/raptor-computing-systems/talos-s...

That presentation offers several potential explainations for why that particular market segment is locked to proprietary, non-libre offerings only.

There's plenty of firmware tucked away in places other than the main processor. On other boards, it's proprietary.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com