Comment by transpute | Hacker News Reader

Comment by transpute | Hacker News Reader

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Thanks for the analysis.

> That repo is for an opaque blob

Marvell patches have been going to upstream u-boot for a subset of CN-9130 functionality. Some were rejected as unwanted SoC-unique features, but that code is still public and could be consolidated into a public git repo for evaluation. Support for core features was merged, e.g. this thread from 2020 to 2023, https://lore.kernel.org/u-boot/ddd355c2-344e-4fbd-ace9-29d10...

> the notorious will-never-be-open-source highly-radioactive "snps blob" .. ARC core

Thanks for highlighting snps+eula. While we all want blob-free hardware like the expensive Talos OpenPOWER, all modern CPUs from Intel (ME) and AMD (PSP, MS Pluton) have management cores and firmware blobs (Intel FSP, AMD Agesa). AMD has a public roadmap for open firmware with OpenSIL, but PSP code is not public. One mitigation is to keep the device offline.

> Marvell.. good at hiding it

While this obfuscation is undesirable, many Arm vendors don't even bother with a fig leaf of upstream support. Would you recommend any Arm SoCs that have ongoing upstream Linux and u-boot coverage/fixes? Ideally, the SoC would also have OSS code for TrustZone (TF-A) and support for ECC memory. RockChip RK-3588 looks promising, https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2024/02/21/almo...

While we all want blob-free hardware like the Talos Power9

... which is 100% blobless. Or the Cavium MIPS64 chips (100% blobless). Or if you want Arm64, the Rockchip RK3399 (100% blobless). You have plenty of choices.

One mitigation is to keep the device offline.

Here's an even better mitigation: don't buy junk like this chip.

Stop blobwashing junk hardware like this with deceptive misrepresentations.

> Cavium MIPS64

Does that include the Cavium Plus CN5020 in Ubquiti EdgeRouter Lite?

https://openwrt.org/toh/hwdata/ubiquiti/ubiquiti_edgerouter_...

https://www.insidegadgets.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/CN5...

I looked into running OpenBSD on ER3-Lite and was told that network routing performance was poor without a binary blob that ships in Ubiquiti router firmware. Cavium is owned by Marvell.

> if you want Arm64, the Rockchip RK3399 (100% blobless). You have plenty of choices.

The challenge is finding existing products that people can buy at retail. We're having this conversation in an HN thread about ECC. The only off-the-shelf Arm NAS (4xSATA, 2xM.2) that I've found with ECC + Debian is the QNAP above.

I will look for an RK3399 SBC that supports ECC memory, 4xSATA and at least one NVME slot, which could be installed into a 1U NAS chassis.

> Stop blobwashing junk hardware like this with deceptive misrepresentations.

ECC is a high priority requirement for an Arm NAS. Would be delighted to find a blobless Arm SBC with ECC support and enough I/O channels for use in a NAS. Otherise, ECC trumps blobs for an offline NAS use case in a 1U chassis, which can be physically secured in a rack against physical tampering.

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