i'll be at @SeaGL

[ariadne@social.treehouse.systems]

this means that in effect, loongarch machines are *great* targets for coreboot. you can take a current 3a6000 desktop, put coreboot-based firmware on it, and have an easily vettable root of trust for your computing.

we aren't *quite* there yet, but it is an achievable target

[ariadne@social.treehouse.systems]

"but ariadne, you can get risc-v stuff for this already"

sure, in theory. however, there aren't any risc-v machines out there which have comparable performance profiles, there just isn't, not even the milk-v pioneer.

but you can get a 3a6000 desktop board on aliexpress for $400 and have a working system with similar clock-for-clock performance to zen 2.

that's actually a really big deal given how good of a target it is for a coreboot port

[bt444@mstdn.social]

@ariadne I got a roma pad 2 and was surprised it can stream 1080p vids no problem. So the risc-v processors are definitely improving in leaps and bounds. That cpu maker, spacemit, also make risc-v server cpus.

[phil@social.kern.pm]

@ariadne Where are they on power draw?

[lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me]

@ariadne Well Loongson also has history in providing machines without compromises to software freedom.

[ariadne@social.treehouse.systems]

@lanodan modern loongson machines are binary blob edk2 builds tho

[lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me]

@ariadne So I guess that's worse than risc-v, at least the VisionFive2 which has nearly entirely done their mainlining process (hence why I bought it).
While I couldn't find that for anything MilkV, their website is like sales-material with very little tech information, which doesn't makes me want to buy anything from them.

Loongarch… I'll have to check more but blobbed edk2 is kind of sad.

[ariadne@social.treehouse.systems]

@bt444 video playback isn’t a useful metric for a lot of reasons, last but not least that there is usually a DSP coprocessor which handles video playback

[ariadne@social.treehouse.systems]

@phil less than 15w without gpu

[ayushnix@social.treehouse.systems]

@ariadne I wish such exotic hardware was available somewhere else besides AliExpress because AliExpress is banned here in India.

[dysfun@social.treehouse.systems]

@ariadne hoping that'll change soon. the new RV spec looks like quite a good base - i can write serious software with what's there.

[ariadne@social.treehouse.systems]

@lanodan i’m actively porting coreboot so…