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edmund_the_destroyer wrote

For one, the ISA is open source, meaning that anyone can design a processor to implement the ISA without paying a licensing fee. This opens the ISA to a huge, worldwide design community that can review, correct, and enhance the architecture over time. Yet because only the ISA is open source, developers are free to safeguard their hardware design’s intellectual property and keep it proprietary for commercialization.

The real value for end users is only if the entire architecture of the end product is open. If you have an open ISA but the implementation is proprietary, I see no end user benefit over getting an ARM or x86 processor.

Am I missing something?

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Fossidarity OP wrote

Of course not, but without an open ISA it's not possible to have a completely open stack. It's similar to how you can still run proprietary software on Linux, does that mean that the end user has no benefit in using Linux?

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edmund_the_destroyer wrote

I feel like I'm missing something, though. I can run Linux on x86 on top of a proprietary BIOS/UEFI with Intel PSP or the AMD equivalent. Soon I will be able to run Linux on a RISC-V processor, but that RISC-V machine might also have a proprietary UEFI and equivalent to an Intel PSP. Have I gained anything by moving to Risc-V?

I think the hope is that some company makes a fully open RISC-V implementation that doesn't suck, with nothing equivalent to the Intel PSP and a libre UEFI. Is that right? I hope that too, but to my knowledge that's not happening - or maybe its happening, but the resulting devices will be the equivalent of a Pentium 2 for performance.

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Fossidarity OP wrote (edited )

Well yeah in that situation you might have gained something from moving to RISC-V, you won't have an Intel Management Engine.

Especially if you use it in combination with coreboot or something like that.

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