* Let AMD know that open-sourcing/disabling PSP is important to you [1].
* Contribute to RISC-V. You can buy a RISC-V SoC today [2]. Does your favorite compiler have a RISC-V backend?
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/5xvn4i/update_corebo... [2] https://www.sifive.com/products/hifive1/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/6krg13/has_there_been_...
If AMD really wanted to, they would have announced something by now. I can commend the AMD rep who continues to push for it, but he can't dictate company policy.
Is only the architecture open, but the silicon isn't? If so, what's the point of that, is the only thing differentiating it from ARM that there's no licensing fee?
If so, are there any ARM SoC vendors making them in a way that they're relatively free from stuff like Intel ME?
Though it's possible they could just offer it as an option on some chips to get both markets which would do the job, but given the sheer diversity of ARM and possibly RISC V SoC vendors, those might be a better starting place than x86.
This is about as anaemic as I am. When I can get RISC-V silicon with a DDR4 and PCIe interface, we'll be talking, but this is pretty weak stuff.
Right now, I want a secure laptop. I can't by one (nothing which doesn't require binary-blobs), so I decide to make my own.
What do I need?
1. An instruction set. 2. A factory. 3. Customers (and a lot, so power of scale can make it somewhat reasonably priced).
All RISC-V could help with is #1. I won't have to contract from ARM and will save some cash there.
But I'll still need to build a factory and deal with economy of scale.
Moreover, what will prevent companies from leaching off RISC-V and patenting improvements. As I understand, there are so few foundries right now that that can easily cross license patents from each other and prevent upstarts from breaking in (so you'll have a situation where the industry leaders end up organizing themselves into something which looks like ARM or Intel/AMD)?
RISC-V is a free and open instruction set architecture (ISA). People can go ahead and build open-source implementations, closed-source implementations, licensed implementations. This is very different than ARM, where you can only buy implementations from ARM, or if you happen to be one of a handful of selected companies with an ARM architectural license (which costs $$$$$), you can build your own implementation, but they still have to meet certain specifications as dictated by ARM. People can freely implement RISC-V processors, extend them, and play around with it. We think RISC-V has a big potential to unleash innovation. As a matter of fact, we believe this is the prerequisite.
SiFive has made the RTL open-sourced that went into FE310. We think this is a big deal, because other SoCs don't open-source their RTL.