Hello all! This is long-winded, the primary aspects of the question are listed at the bottom.
I am deeply fascinated by open and secure computing. I have grown to deeply dislike x86 and ARM because of this, what with egregious licensing terms/fees and the dubious CSME/PSP/TrustZone coprocessors.
This lead me to RISC-V, the subsequent realization that we are still a long way off from RISC-V chips with performance suited to desktop use, (though I hold out hope that one day, hopefully within the next few decades, we will see a silicon fab producing powerful Hazard3 or 4, or 20 by that point-derived CPUs) and then POWER. (Also SPARC, MIPS, and other obscure open RISC ISAs, but I'd like at least some modern app support and a computer made this century to run them on.)
Now, I'm fully aware the POWER ISA wasn't handed off to the Linux Foundation until 2019, and that the design schematics for the 970MP will most definitely never see the light of day. BUT! What I have read of Apple utilizing Sun's Open Firmware spec and the belief that there isn't some shady coprocessor that I'm not allowed to see doing nefarious things in the background has piqued my interest regarding PowerPC Macs, in particular the last and most powerful of the line (If, of course, point 1 means what I hope it means and point 2 is correct.)
Truthfully, what I'm really looking to buy is something from Raptor Computing, but I wouldn't want to spend a stupendously inflated amount of money on one of their POWER9 systems when rumor has it they're working in conjunction with a silicon fab startup on POWER10 systems.
So, this is my overly-complex and needy rationale for wanting a Power Mac G5 Quad. Essentially, it will be an interim to familiarize myself with POWER and wait for the system I really want (fingers crossed Raptor's supply chain gets rebuilt and I don't have to pay $6k for their base, 4 Core/8GB RAM system that launched at $1k pre-lockdown!)
Whether or not I should buy one depends on the answers to these two questions:
1) When we say "Open Firmware" do we mean that the source code is publicly available or do we mean that Sun defined some things firmware needs to do and then Apple just made their own proprietary firmware that does those things?
2) Do the PowerPC 970MPs have some kind of coprocessor analogous to the above mentioned CSME, PSP, and TrustZone? If they do, is the code powering them available to audit in some way?
I've had no luck with finding answers to these questions, so I figured you all would be the most knowledgeable people to ask. Any insight greatly appreciated! :^)
I am deeply fascinated by open and secure computing. I have grown to deeply dislike x86 and ARM because of this, what with egregious licensing terms/fees and the dubious CSME/PSP/TrustZone coprocessors.
This lead me to RISC-V, the subsequent realization that we are still a long way off from RISC-V chips with performance suited to desktop use, (though I hold out hope that one day, hopefully within the next few decades, we will see a silicon fab producing powerful Hazard3 or 4, or 20 by that point-derived CPUs) and then POWER. (Also SPARC, MIPS, and other obscure open RISC ISAs, but I'd like at least some modern app support and a computer made this century to run them on.)
Now, I'm fully aware the POWER ISA wasn't handed off to the Linux Foundation until 2019, and that the design schematics for the 970MP will most definitely never see the light of day. BUT! What I have read of Apple utilizing Sun's Open Firmware spec and the belief that there isn't some shady coprocessor that I'm not allowed to see doing nefarious things in the background has piqued my interest regarding PowerPC Macs, in particular the last and most powerful of the line (If, of course, point 1 means what I hope it means and point 2 is correct.)
Truthfully, what I'm really looking to buy is something from Raptor Computing, but I wouldn't want to spend a stupendously inflated amount of money on one of their POWER9 systems when rumor has it they're working in conjunction with a silicon fab startup on POWER10 systems.
So, this is my overly-complex and needy rationale for wanting a Power Mac G5 Quad. Essentially, it will be an interim to familiarize myself with POWER and wait for the system I really want (fingers crossed Raptor's supply chain gets rebuilt and I don't have to pay $6k for their base, 4 Core/8GB RAM system that launched at $1k pre-lockdown!)
Whether or not I should buy one depends on the answers to these two questions:
1) When we say "Open Firmware" do we mean that the source code is publicly available or do we mean that Sun defined some things firmware needs to do and then Apple just made their own proprietary firmware that does those things?
2) Do the PowerPC 970MPs have some kind of coprocessor analogous to the above mentioned CSME, PSP, and TrustZone? If they do, is the code powering them available to audit in some way?
I've had no luck with finding answers to these questions, so I figured you all would be the most knowledgeable people to ask. Any insight greatly appreciated! :^)
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