Ron Minnich (Coreboot dev): "HiFive is no more open, today, than your average ARM SOC; and it is much less open than, Power"

Hardware
1

link: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=RISC-V-Not-All-Open-Yet

Would really be interested to know if any Power9 devices are to be developed by Purism, since their prices have dropped and it seems that for now RISC is doing more poorly than Power, in terms of openness?!

IDK, what do you guys think?

2

Have a look at https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=SiFive-Open-Boot-Code-Coming

The code hasn’t been released yet, but if it is you’ll have a blob-free HiFive.

3

thanks

the price is almost the same as the Tallos II Lite which can run on frequencies higher than 1600 and support for dedicated GPU which would make it a great candidate for Desktop use. The HiFive’s one could be more suitable for laptop use though.

Would be interesting to know how much different are their architectures. Power9’s architecture seems to be based on RISC as well

Power Architecture is a registered trademark for similar reduced instruction set computing (RISC) instruction sets for microprocessors developed and manufactured by such companies as IBM, Freescale/NXP, AppliedMicro, LSI, Teledyne e2v and Synopsys. The governing body is Power.org, comprising over 40 companies and organizations.

source