Our hardware has its own problems.
We rely way too much on x86 and ia64 architecture, both of which have only two big manufacturers in the world. That’s not good because it’s almost monopolies.
It would be better to have simpler chipsets that can be produced by more manufacturers worldwide, and especially ones that can be produced by smaller regional manufacturers.
On top of that we shouldn’t distribute compiled binaries for the x86 and ia64 chipsets; instead program code should be distributed like
.wasm, in a hardware-independent way, and compiled on the target device. That would enable that hardware can use any chipset it wants and there are no software incompatibilities because of it.RISC-V
- royalty free
- future-proof
- extensible
- base ISA is 40 instructions!
- beautifully documented
- can perform in a range of situations, from embedded to many-cores servers!
- can handle petabytes of memory (the higher schemes)
- no nonsense historic compatibility drag.
RISC-V is this
I have been waiting impatiently for WASM to really take off. I’d imagine that some day, it will be the most popular way to build software.
On top of that we shouldn’t distribute compiled binaries for the x86 and ia64 chipsets; instead program code should be distributed like .wasm, in a hardware-independent way, and compiled on the target device. That would enable that hardware can use any chipset it wants and there are no software incompatibilities because of it.
You’re describing Gentoo Linux . . . which is not especially popular among Linux distributions even though it runs on just about anything. There may be a reason for that.
Well, they’re talking about something lower level than the operating system. For one.
Secondly, every distro is inferior to the only perfect thing mankind has ever created: Hannah Montana Linux. If you’re using anything else you may as well just break your computer and drink cyanide.
Those are called duopolies (yes it’s a very common thing)
How is performance though?
And honestly ARM isn’t that much than x86 in terms of freedom and competition.
Do we really need a UEFI replacement?
Yeah we should replace it with legacy bios.
Probably not. At least not right now. But China needs one apparently.
My thoughts are “Why do they need one?”. It’s not like UEFI stops you doing anything.
UBIOS’s unique features over UEFI include increased support for chiplets and other heterogeneous computing use-cases, such as multi-CPU motherboards with mismatching CPUs, something UEFI struggles with or does not support. It will also better support non-x86 CPU architectures such as ARM, RISC-V, and LoongArch, the first major Chinese operating system.
[citation needed]
I would say this is about increasing the level of control of the platform, not about technological issues.
Edit: For example, here’s the RISC-V UEFI specification.
It’s about having a home grown option. Can’t trust Americans not to backdoor everything, and that generally conflicts with China’s desire to backdoor everything.
Control is the most important thing to the CCP so it makes complete sense from their perspective. We would be free to buy into it but they would definitely force it on devices within China.
For x86 or ARM?
Does that mean I will have more choice in which surveillance agency I want to be spied by?
UEFI is a standard, not a product. You could make your own even
Or use this…
Tianocore open source uefi implementation exist for many years
This doesn’t support many boards.
True, but I really appreciate that someone is doing it. (It’s far beyond my capabilities…)
could
could in the same sense that i could check all software i use for bugs and malicious code. realistically, i can’t, because it’s way too much work.
But you could work together with other people, and you could be many people that each checked his/her part for malicious code.
So that just means UBIOS is explicitly for spying since UEFI is open source and a standard right?
Maybe not, if Intel goes tits-up
Implying Intel motherboards will ever support more than US govt approved technology now that they have a substantial holding in Intel
I think that’s their point. You wouldn’t have a choice again if Intel goes out of business.
Ouch.
