Is no one else concerned with the fact that only two companies have an oligopoly on pretty much all computers in the...

Is no one else concerned with the fact that only two companies have an oligopoly on pretty much all computers in the planet?
Something has to be done about Intel, AMD and the x86 architecture and moving to ARM is not the solution.

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I was investigating open hardware computers today and found some no step on snek lolberts selling one for ~100 USD. It claims to be NSA spying free but was using ARM chips. I'm no expert but I suspect ARM is just as compromised as Intel and AMD but I hope I'm wrong on that. Can we start our own chip manufacturing operation and not get compromised by porky spy agencies? Or is our only hope that China is, at the very least, hostile to the US and their chips will only have Ministry of State Security backdoors installed?

The state of hardware today is pretty fucking depressing. Without control of hardware, open source software seems like a moot point. But there's so much capital investment needed to start up a chip foundry it seems unlikely that any competitor, much less an open one, will spring up.

We just have to wait until the DPRK starts making its own computer hardware and shipping it across the world. I give it 5 years max before this happens.

People knew it forever. And what youre going to do with it, pleb?

If I had my way, I'd socialize them (they're already heavily funded by the public) and then invest a shitton into open processors based on a RISC ISA like RISC-V or MIPS.

Even FPGAs have been probably backdoored by various governments, so open cores aren't even safe (maybe). Still better than nothing though tbqh.

I don't think RISC processors are the solution, what inspired me to make this thread was an article talking about why the current console generation uses x86. RISC processors needs lots of parallel programming to run efficiently and parallel programming is quiet complicated.
RISC is OK for complicated mathematical works but for multimedia is a drag.
I wish we had a zilog z80,000

Tbh, things are already headed towards parallelism, and the difficulty of parallel programing is mostly going to have to be tackled one way or another. It seems like you've got a bit of a limited imagination if your ideal architecture is the Z80000's.

It's especially annoying that you basically can't use a PC without giving money to Israel.

I recently "upgraded" my CPU to an AMD model from 2012 because it was the last one they made before inserting NSA backdoors into their CPUs like Intel. I'm afraid I won't be changing my processor again for a very, very long time now.

x86 sucks, it's always sucked. But the bigger problem IMHO is the displacement of PCs by phones, tablets, and other veiled incarnations of dumb terminalsthin clients. With the design of newer mainframecloud services, you wouldn't actually have access to any data on the server, and your device wouldn't actually have any computational capacity.

Just keyboard/pointer input sent to the server, and a stream of a/v sent back. Literally uncrackable.

Moving to ARM would actually solve most of that problem, since ARM's licensing terms are far more lenient than Intel's, the ARM ISA's simplicity means it's easier to reverse-engineer (plus its official documentation is much better to begin with), and there are already numerous competing ARM licensees worldwide (fabless or otherwise).

RISC is no more reliant on multithreading than CISC, the primary tradeoff between CISC & RISC is memory efficiency vs. CPU complexity. Speaking of, x86 hasn't been CISC (or even x86 in any meaningful sense, for that matter) since the "CRISC" Pentium Pro back in 1995. Almost immediately afterward, every "x86" CPU has actually been a RISC CPU with an x86 instruction decoder block pasted on the front (in fact, the cores of many mid-90s x86 CPUs were old RISC ISAs repurposed inside CRISC, such as the AMD's 29K RISC):
cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/2006/CompArch/documents/all/trends/cpu_history.html#8086

Just use a Z80. Good enough for the Game Boy, good enough for me.
t. Cyber-Zerzanist

Make a beowulf cluster of Motorola processors and steal+convert the assembly code from Virtual box and run an x86 virtual machine.
AMD CPUs already have like 16 cores on average so it would practically be the same thing.

You realize Red Star Linux is closed source right? Whatever they make will probably be equally as spyware as Shitntel and Gaymd

Hmm… We need to rethink CPUs and their uses

And you don't see Holla Forums getting angry about it but most of them are phoneposters anyway

So we can have a clandestine CPU in the future? That does sound good but still carries a lot of disventages
That's the point, consoles moved to x86 to easy the work load of the devs by allowing simpler code
That doesn't mean much because in vidya the memory is going to be eaten up by the graphics and sound, from the preview generation to the current the biggest improvement was more memory
That is the biggest issue with x86, the blot of 40 years of retrocompatibility and extensions to the instruction for oddly specific purposes

I really want to get into retro computing and discovering the secrets of the z80

If necessary (the Chinese' early Longsoon MIPS, for instance). Though legitimately license designed RISC CPU variants of ARM, MIPS, PPC, SPARC, etc. have historically been very common, numerous, and inexpensive.
Heh, no they didn't, they moved to x86 because it allows for shared IDE toolchains between console and PC. Also x86 assembler is ludicrously byzantine, which makes it much harder to do by hand (not that practically any modern devs, even console devs, are competent enough to use much inline assembler).
Yup, even in the most intense general computing, it's been a very long time since instructions consumed a significant fraction of bus traffic, let alone storage, compared to data.

That sounds amazing, tell me more.
if powerpc can handle linear program well enough all my concerns would be solved, still we will need something to process multimedia
I don't think so, remember consoles have dedicated dev kits, allowing any desktop pc to be a potential dev station will open the door for homebrews and bootlegs
What CPU has the easiest assembly anyway?

You do realize that RISC CPUs can do SIMD, right? No clue why you think that RISC CPUs are bad at multimedia tbqh. Also, graphics cards are a thing too.

The Chinese wanted a cheap native CPU, so they made a 99%-compatible clone of MIPS in the early 2000s called Loongson (NOT Longsoon, sorry), which they eventually made 100% compatible in the late 2000s after coming to an agreement with MIPS over patents, one other interesting feature is hardware-based x86 emulator acceleration. It's part of a common pattern by ML countries of cloning western computers, as China also has cloned ARM and Alpha CPUs. Russia still engages in similar behavior, as its Elbrus systems use cloned SPARC processors.
The modified consoles included in devkits are rarely used for actual development, rather than simply debugging compiled code, the most important part of the "devkit" is actually the interface hardware and special SDKs for standard PCs. Programming for consoles has always been done using crosscompilers hosted on a standard PC, so ISA has pretty much never been relevant to dev environment. Though sometimes a similar PC platform, like IIGS for 65K, Macs/Amigas/Commodores for 68K/PPC, or SGIs for MIPS, were favored by many devs. And some consoles were sister platforms to a related PC, like the MegaDrive and Sega SC-3000, or Jaguar and Atari Falcon.

What I meant by "shared toolchain" wasn't for the host development platform (which has always been shared, since you can't really use consoles as workstations), but the target platform, as x86-based consoles are easier to write shared code for console/PC multiplatform titles. This takes last gen's standardization on PPC (which eased console-only multiplats) and extends it (minus Nintendo, who are using commodity ARM cellphone hardware) to cover PC gamers.

That will require parallel programming and running audio or video on software mode. no good.

Sounds interesting but sounds like those CPUs are meant for big irons while my concern are home computers
What a whack, I thought dev kits were actually used for coding

Is developing secure and open computers a necessity for successful overthrow of capitalism? It seems far easier to take over Intel's fabs and designs after the revolution and modify them to suit our needs.

How about moving to LEG then instead of ARM

someone did a study of it and found out that in puts a bit of data on any thumbdrive so it can track who has got the thumbdrives.

It depends, the MIPS and ARM clones are mostly used in end-user cheap hardware like netbooks and cellphones, while the SPARC and Alpha clones are indeed mostly used in servers and supercomputers.

In the early stages of any revolution, clandestine industry is needed for opsec reasons. In the late stages, yes, you become "the man" and take control.

Building popular demand for botnet-free alternatives also curtails the ability for the establishment to compromise any given component, reducing your need to rely on your own hacks.

Alright I haven't considered your second point before and I agree with it. Building popular demand for free hardware is another aspect of spreading class consciousness. I would say maybe 5% of my acquaintances have openly expressed interest in spying free devices but this might be less for normies so there's plenty of work to do.

But the issue now is how do we get desktop CPUs for the masses?

I do think free hardware should be a bigger issue than it is now and I see no reason for that beside money.

The CPU in the Game Boy can do merely a subset of the Z80 instruction set. The Sega Mastersystem and Game Gear CPUs can do the full instruction set.

No. You need permission to dig up the rare-earth minerals, or else risk having your system sabotaged by environmentalists secretly envious of your expansive carbon footprint.

Does one really need coltan to make chips?
Aww mate

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics to the rescue!
(here in Brazil they come with Ubuntu rather than Winblows)