On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 12:18:21PM -0500, ronwirring@Safe-mail.net wrote:

-------- Original Message -------- From: Jonathan Neuschäferj.neuschaefer@gmx.net Apparently from: arm-netbook-bounces@lists.phcomp.co.uk To: Eco-Conscious Computing arm-netbook@lists.phcomp.co.uk Subject: Re: [Arm-netbook] sifive sells a riscv cpu mainboard Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2018 00:40:03 +0100

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On Mon, Feb 05, 2018 at 03:05:03PM -0500, ronwirring@Safe-mail.net wrote:

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Can you tell if the mainboard is free software foundation compliant?

As far as I understand, yes.

Then I got the video wrong. I thought his listing of not open source devices about the riscv mainboard would negate fsf compliance.

I'm not an expert on FSF compliance (by which you mean compliance to the criteria of FSF's RYF program, I assume), but the Hifive Unleashed is better on the Hardware freedom side than any computer that was certified as "Respects Your Freedom" so far, and (AFAIK) not worse on the software freedom side.

Whether SiFive (or anyone else) will request RYF certification for the Hifive Unleased is a separate question, that I cannot answer.

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No, MALI is (AFAIK) not available as a separate chip, so you can't put it on a board if the SoC doesn't already have it.

I did not know. Apparently you then cannot buy a bag of mali devices?

That's right. You can buy a bag of devices that contain MALI (e.g. ARM-based SoCs from Allwinner or some other vendors), but not a bag of devices that contain *only* MALI (i.e. dedicated MALI GPUs).

[ I guess you *could* run a SoC with MALI in it in a PCIe target mode and control the MALI remotely over PCIe, and thus use the SoC as sort of a "remote MALI" chip, but I guess that's very much besides the point. ]

Jonathan Neuschäfer