Well, maybe AMD does at least some security reviewing on their own? /s
ARM could be a affordable alternative to x86 if that works for you.
ARM could be a affordable alternative to x86 if that works for you.
Even the open source friendly Raspberry Pi relies on proprietary blobs and proprietary firmware, with vast parts of the documentation only being available to system integrators (meaning: not you) under an NDA.
Theirs is a Broadcom chip, but my understanding is that the scenario is pretty much the same for other ARM vendors. If the chip is anything more complicated than your average 8-bit micro-controller, expect it to be running some kind of "system" which is, of course, closed source.
I may be wrong, but my impression is that a lot of the other ARM boards out there have the ARM chip as the main CPU, and without a management chip watching it. In any case, a board like that, or a Pi with a reverse-engineered firmware blob (currently in development) would be better than the Raspberry Pi as it is now.
Broadcom (producer of the chips used on the RPi) and open source friendly? A sense an oxymoron.