Really hoping for RISC-V to take off and become a viable and mainstream alternative for consumer desktop machines so we can have a modern, fully open, and customizable computer.
If there is a riscv64 server/workstation out there that I can buy, today, I would love to order one.
They're the "closest", but not remotely close.
AFAICT all the SiFive products that are available to purchase and have workstation-ish amounts of RAM require boot blobs. I would be happy to be wrong about this.
https://forums.sifive.com/t/remaining-agency-issues-to-be-so...
Apparently there was a very limited run of dev boards for which no blobs are needed, and then they promptly discontinued that product and replaced it with a (confusingly-similarly-named) blobbified product that you can pre-order via mouser (listed as "backordered, no ETA"). This product is already marked EOL which is not encouraging.
https://drewdevault.com/2022/01/15/2022-01-15-The-RISC-V-exp...
That board's firmware is not open-source at all. See the link in my previous comment.
> Zero idea what blobs this requires.
You've stumbled into the wrong thread, my friend. This thread is about open-source firmware. The stuff you're hyping does not deliver that.
I am definitely not hyping anything, least of all SiFive.
This subthread started with the need for RISC-V workstations, I simply pointed out the closest thing to one of those. Of course I didn't mention the firmware situation, which was a mistake, but I also didn't know about the situation.