[Info-vax] Open hardware

[Simon Clubley]

On 2024-04-18, John Dallman <jgd at cix.co.uk> wrote:
>
> As for RISC-V, who is offering RISC-V 64-bit servers or cloud instances
> as of now? I count Scaleway, since early March, but they're bare metal
> servers, *not* Linux ready to run. RISC-V has a lot of hype, somewhat
> questionable potential, and not very much in service that's suitable for
> VMS. 
>

RISC-V only supplies part of the solution. There's only limited utility
to the CPU architecture being open when the rest of the hardware, GPU,
onboard memory setup, etc, is still behind heavily restricted datasheets
and manuals.

What I would really like to see is a _completely_ open board, including
GPU and peripheral/memory documentation, with the documentation written
in enough detail that you could in theory write your own OS from scratch
without ever having to sign a single NDA or beg for access to some
restricted documentation.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.