Almost a year ago, I built my grandparents a new pc with an a10-5800k processor, on the pretense that AMD is hurting and they contribute a foss driver, they deserve some support.
A year later, my grandparents are still regularly using catalyst on their Suse install, because whenever I plug in their living room tv via hdmi, the driver fails and I get two black screens, or the tv has color bars on it until I mode set the normal desktop monitor, and then we are back to all black.
Looking forward, in future computer builds, I am looking at parts not for features or performance or reliability but I look for parts that aren't binary blobs doing whatever the hell they want with no way to audit their behavior, in kernel space.
The problem is there is nobody on my side in this. Intel's chipsets are completely proprietary, with no open source support for them at all. Their processors are obfuscated trade secrets with opcodes to payload encrypted firmware blobs to modify the microcode to do whatever the hell they want at runtime, and their network controllers have binary blob firmware that might be broadcasting who knows what.
Sadly, though, they are the only vendor with an actual free gpu driver. No firmware blobs, no bullshit, relatively open specification. They don't support gallium, but really, thats their call. They waste their time, and everyone elses time, not using one stack, but at least they are trying.
However, on the other side of the fence, you have AMD - they participate in coreboot, their cpus are still trade secret proprietary mess but not as bad as Intel, but they use prorprietary firmware blobs with their gpus, and thus you can't reimplement their driver without reverse engineering that crap.
When it comes to processors in general, they are all bullshit trade secret messes. There is not one open spec cpu, even the Leeong chip from China licenses MIPS. So if you are stuck on some proprietary garbage, you might as well use the x86 chips, since at least Intel isn't profiteering off of IP law with their cpu design (AMD's contract with them is pennies on the chips they make).
So why can't I buy an AMD chipset with an Intel APU? I want open firmware across the board, because I want an open system where I can look at exactly how everything works and tweak it to my desire. But there is no way to build a system without someone restricting my freedom with my own hardware, and it sucks.
Meanwhile, Nvidia is off in la-la land, their proprietary blob graphics cards can blow me, but Nouveau is more open than AMD chips, since the reverse engineered firmware is foss! And they have open source drivers for their Tegra APUs, and they just license ARM cores.
I hope they consider making a Tegra 5+ based NUC, because I'd be interested in that. Kepler graphics on a foss driver + firmware, on a chipset with coreboot, and arm v8 cores I could live with. But right now all our options suck. If I had connections, i definitely have the desire, I'd make an open hardware company. But you wouldn't want to found it in the US, because patent and trademark trolling would crush you before you got off the ground.
2013/09/13
The Future of the Computing Platform
I'm in love with NUCs. Even though I usually despise the Intel marketing terminology (because they always trademark it, and because it usually sounds silly like ultrabook) in this case they nailed it on the head.
Firstly, the desktop. Or more specifically, I'd call this the class without an internal battery, because size is the topic. ATX and even micro ATX mainboards are now complete overkill. The only reason they even exist is exclusively graphics cards - and only the most insane users run multi-card configurations (note - the difficulty with multi card configurations is probably on the foundation of how hackneyed the entire platform is, but ranting about hardware architecture is something I have already done, and something I will probably do again in the future. Regardless, if you discount the graphics card slots, what can you really put in a pci slot anymore? Let's list them:
I predict a new world of form factors - for the classical enthusiast class, a small mitx size board taking up to 2 sodimm slots and a socket in the 20 - 30mm range rather than 35 - 50 (since large dies are overheating anyway), mpcie and msata completely replacing standard pcie slots, and 2.5" mechanical drives becoming standard under-the-board connected disks. The only exception is gpus, which won't be able to easily migrate from high bandwidth 16x lanes with space for heatsinks and dedicated fans running on 12v to pcie 1x at 3.3v with no fan options unless the device makes room. But APUs are now proving themselves very capable, and unified memory is a huge benefit for simpler implementation. And all 3 big players have apus (Nvidias are just ARM based).
Even smaller than that, I expect soldered boards of combined pcb + cpu + memory to become common, since you rarely upgrade any of those parts, and becuse all 3 are always mandatory in any build. It enables smaller units when you don't need to worry about standard ports and sockets.
The enthusiast market won't go away, but likewise these big behemoth motherboards are also dinosaurs. There are connectors for these smaller form factors, and NUCs are paving the way, although the combination of case and pcb isn't great. What you really want is a case and a motherboard standard with a simpler power connection architecture (so you could have an external or internal power brick). But they are the future, and it will be small.
Firstly, the desktop. Or more specifically, I'd call this the class without an internal battery, because size is the topic. ATX and even micro ATX mainboards are now complete overkill. The only reason they even exist is exclusively graphics cards - and only the most insane users run multi-card configurations (note - the difficulty with multi card configurations is probably on the foundation of how hackneyed the entire platform is, but ranting about hardware architecture is something I have already done, and something I will probably do again in the future. Regardless, if you discount the graphics card slots, what can you really put in a pci slot anymore? Let's list them:
- Discrete Audio Cards: Only for audiophiles. And if you care, just get a mainboard with beefier integrated audio. Asus even has a z87 board with a discete class audio solution embedded into the board proper. You don't need a coprocessor because pcm to onboard analog signaling is dirt cheap, and you often end up using digital audio out anyway in which case you can often just transport an aac or the pcm stream anyway. Note: spdif fuckers, get opus support in digital audio standards yesterday and junk all that other crap.
- TV Tuner Cards: One, tv is dying, two, there are usb tuners. When I built my grandparents rig I got them an internal pci tuner under the assumption it gets better quality. In hind sight, probably not. On the first point, broadcast television is already going the way of the Dodo and I would never build a new system around converting dvb-t or a signals to mpeg2.
- Raid Cards: The integrated raid controllers on most mid range motherboards are sufficient for 3 - 5 disk raid 5, and really, if you are even thinking of consumer raid this is where you are looking. Servers already have entirely different pcb form factors anyway, so you can keep dedicated pcie raid cards there just fine. Additionally, raid 0 with ssds has no performance improvement (maybe sata express will change that in a higher per channel bandwidth world) but I doubt it, because principally ssds already have radical random reads and writes. This means you might as well raid 1 with ssds rather than raid 5, and SSDs aren't like mechanical disks where one memory sector going bad kills the drive. You just don't need that redundancy class even in a homebrew home server. And again, if you do, the integrated raid is often good enough.
- PCIE SSDs: These have a claim to fame in how sata 6gbps is at its limit and the only way to get more bandwidth in consumer hardware right now is pci express lanes. However, the interconnect isn't really targeting block devices, and the big 16x slots are overkill for 1GB/s sequential read ssds.
- Network Switches: This is one that is harder to replace because a four way splitter has peak bandwidth requirements of 4gb/s. It isn't a block device so you can't stick it on sata 6gbps, even though that would make sense. Though, again, who is building a system with a network switch? I intend to, but I'm weird. Niche markets shouldn't dictate consumer standards.
- Port Expansion: ie, more usb3 ports on a hub card. Like integrated audio, this should also be integrated to satisfatory levels. If you need more, you are a niche.
I predict a new world of form factors - for the classical enthusiast class, a small mitx size board taking up to 2 sodimm slots and a socket in the 20 - 30mm range rather than 35 - 50 (since large dies are overheating anyway), mpcie and msata completely replacing standard pcie slots, and 2.5" mechanical drives becoming standard under-the-board connected disks. The only exception is gpus, which won't be able to easily migrate from high bandwidth 16x lanes with space for heatsinks and dedicated fans running on 12v to pcie 1x at 3.3v with no fan options unless the device makes room. But APUs are now proving themselves very capable, and unified memory is a huge benefit for simpler implementation. And all 3 big players have apus (Nvidias are just ARM based).
Even smaller than that, I expect soldered boards of combined pcb + cpu + memory to become common, since you rarely upgrade any of those parts, and becuse all 3 are always mandatory in any build. It enables smaller units when you don't need to worry about standard ports and sockets.
The enthusiast market won't go away, but likewise these big behemoth motherboards are also dinosaurs. There are connectors for these smaller form factors, and NUCs are paving the way, although the combination of case and pcb isn't great. What you really want is a case and a motherboard standard with a simpler power connection architecture (so you could have an external or internal power brick). But they are the future, and it will be small.
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