POWER9 Blackbird Secure Desktop review
  • Paladin of the Pegasos
    Paladin of the Pegasos
    Intuition
    Posts: 1110 from 2013/5/24
    From: Nederland
    Quote:


    Upcoming review: something POWERful

    I’ve got a very special piece of hardware coming my way for review: a Blackbird Secure Desktop from Raptor Computing Systems. The Blackbird is a desktop PC with an IBM POWER9 processor that is open source from top to its very bottom – no firmware blobs, no management engines, no proprietary BIOS.

    As the product page details:

    The Blackbird™ mainboard is an affordable, owner-controllable, desktop and entry server level mainboard. Built around the IBM POWER9 processor, and leveraging Linux and OpenPOWER™ technology, Blackbird™ allows you to secure your data without sacrificing performance. Designed with a fully owner-controlled CPU domain, you can audit and modify any portion of the open source firmware on the Blackbird™ mainboard, all the way down to the CPU microcode. This is an unprecedented level of access for any modern desktop-class machine, and one that is increasingly needed to assure safety and compliance with new regulations, such as the EU’s GDPR.

    I don’t yet know what exact specifications my review unit will have, but I’m assuming it’ll be the base model that has the 4-core POWER9 processor with SMT4 (4-way multithreading). I do know it’ll come with an AMD Radeon Pro WX4100 LP, which will be the only piece of hardware requiring card-side proprietary firmware (but it’s optional, since the mainboard itself has basic open source graphics capability too).

    I don’t usually do this, but there’s a first thing for everything, so here we go: do any of you have any questions about this exotic hardware you want me to try and answer? Specific things to look into? I’ll also be able to ask some questions to Raptor’s CTO, so there’s a lot of opportunity to get some serious answers.

    I’ll try to take as many suggestions into account as I can. The current estimated delivery date is 6 August, so expect the actual review in late August or early September. Also I’m sorry for the title pun.


    https://www.osnews.com/story/132141/upcoming-review-something-powerful/

    Get your questions in gents. :)

    [ Edited by Intuition 31.07.2020 - 12:16 ]
    1.67GHz 15" PowerBook G4, 1GB RAM, 128MB Radeon 9700M Pro, 64GB SSD, MorphOS 3.15

    2.7GHz DP G5, 4GB RAM, 512MB Radeon X1950 Pro, 500GB SSHD, MorphOS 3.9
  • »31.07.20 - 10:14
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  • Jim
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Jim
    Posts: 4977 from 2009/1/28
    From: Delaware, USA
    Looking forward to it arriving almost as much as you. Keep us informed.
    "Never attribute to malice what can more readily explained by incompetence"
  • »04.08.20 - 00:50
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  • Butterfly
    Butterfly
    outlawal2
    Posts: 87 from 2009/5/6
    Sounds intriguing. What OS can run on that hardware? I am assuming some flavor of Linux, but anything else?
    "Pride is a poor substitute for intelligence." Quote from Rambo...
  • »05.08.20 - 18:41
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12058 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    > What OS can run on that hardware? I am assuming
    > some flavor of Linux, but anything else?

    *BSD
  • »05.08.20 - 22:46
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