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The goal of the EOMA (Embedded Open Modular Architecture) project is to introduce the idea of being ethically responsible about both the ecological and the financial resources required to design, manufacture, acquire and maintain our personal computing devices. The EOMA68 standard is a freely-accessible, royalty-free, unencumbered hardware standard formulated and tested over the last five years around the ultra-simple philosophy of "just plug it in: it will work".
With devices built following this standard, one can upgrade the CPU-card (consisting of CPU, RAM and some local storage) of a device while keeping the same housing (e.g. laptop). One can also use the CPU-card in different devices (e.g. unplug CPU-card from laptop, plug into desktop); or use a replaced/discarded CPU-card from a laptop for NAS storage or a micro-server. There are housings currently available for a laptop (can be 3D-printed in full, or in part to replace parts that break) and a micro-desktop; and there are plans for others like routers or tablets in the future.
There are multiple articles talking about this project and analyzing the hardware, for example from ThinkPenguin, CNXSoft or EngadgetNG. There is also a recent live-streamed video introducing the project.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 02 2016, @09:10PM
One of the main points of this design is to literally replace the whole motherboard while keeping the rest of the machine.
Less waste, way cheaper in the long run, user-friendly, etc.
Sure that means less flexibility for RAM upgrade (and other individual parts) at first,
but who knows, maybe a more expensive version with sockets could be a possibility
in the future. But it has to start somewhere.
Worst case, that's a comparatively small compromise since a more powerful card would still be relatively cheap.
That ATX thing looks like a good idea, I' don't know about it. But I'm pretty sure it can hardly be fully libre.
Probably less portable/adaptable, and costs way more. It also can't be as ethical, as eco-friendly,
can't be repaired as easily (and for less money), etc.
Seriously, if you still think it's a stupid design, you're still focusing on the finger pointing away to the moon, so to speak.
You focus so much on performance right now (in its infancy) when it can only get better with time and support.
Performance will come.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 03 2016, @07:52AM
ATX is just the format for motherboards inside "normal" desktop PCs. A kind of standard that defines board dimensions, connectors, etc. so that you can build a PC picking among different cases, power supplies, motherboards, etc. I don't think the CPU sockets are part of ATX or even the DIMM sockets, it's just something the motherboard designers often put in. CPU sockets change every generation of CPUs and DIMMs are only compatible to similarly fast buses, so it's not such a mix and match freely, but there's quite a lot of choice.
The format itself is allright for the desktp use case. Its diminishing sales are related to that everyone already has desktop PCs and it's hard to justify new features or performance, and other problems:
- common operating systems are poor and people resist to change to uncommon ones
- people fall addict to mobility and prefer computers they can carry with them always
- maintaining a PC is too difficult for some people that they prefer thowing out a device every year or two. That's partly because of the internet wars and malware business but also because the poor software choices and habits, not an intrinsically unavoidable problem.
- simply out of fashion ?
The realproblem is that all modern CPUs to put in those ATX motherboards are cracked from factory to allow third parties to remote control, spy and sabotage your computing if they (or whoever gets that access in the future) want to. They carry unreplaceable operating system/hypervisor and server software which controls your operating system. And the CPU won't even access RAM before this hypervisor is verified as unaltered (with a digital signature) and set up.
The problem with older ATX motherboards is that they carry proprietary software in their BIOS ROMs that can still take control of the computer. Those BIOS can be replaced with libreboot but it takes a lot of reverser engineering, so there aren't many options already available.
See https://libreboot.org/faq/#intel [libreboot.org] for details.
Once the chips themselfs come cracked, you can only try to avoid the manufacturers that do so. But:
- Manufacturers are few
- The portion of CPU manufacturers that allow you to boot an operating system under your control keep decreasing. Those that still allow you are the ones selling less powerful processors so that the overhead of cryptography and system management mode is too much compared to the rest of the design. And those have other problems for 100% free software operation
- Despite the moore law dubious keeping pace, and the use cases for more performane being more dubious, people keep massively buying more powerful but more remote conrolled devices because of network effects (they want to see videos with excessive resolution, etc.) and that it is to hard for lay people to analyse the threats. It's easier to just compare price, RAM size, number of cores and clock. This spec race means manufacturing equipment needs to be replaced often, and that makes it more difficult in capital to build processors, so helping to keep the market an oligopoly.
I really would like that the most performant and cheap computers were the more free, but it will never ever be so. Your data, your freedom and the possibility to screw you when somebody pays for it are parts of the prices you pay for this powerful computers that you buy at little money cost and high non-money cost. If that's the deal you like, you're normal, most people prefer this, and I stopped caring whether they understand it or not. If yo want another deal then look at EOMA-68, tinkerphones, talos, ministry of freedom, think penguin, the Pyra handheld and others. Or in general, if that's too complex for you but don't want to be ripped off, go and look at RYF certified hardware. Of the ones I know EOMA is the most environmentally aware. But only if successful, of course.
You'll find some ATX motherboards that are RYF. But very few. I think I remember 2 that you can buy online and use without any installation or reverse engineering. I may not be aware of all of them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 03 2016, @06:45PM
Thanks for the info.
Ok so basically, the argument of ATX being as modular (if not more)
is at least more meaningful than the laptop argument, since when the laptop is dead,
most of it is.
Indeed some powerful ATX motherboards are fully libre. But they cost an arm.
But fully libre, comparatively very cheap, and with a bright future performance-wise, EOMA68 has this.
Privacy matters, it's not for some lunatics: https://www.privacytools.io/ [privacytools.io]
But it's more than that, it's about the ability to improve, build upon, and do whatever you want with your machine.
No industry-imposed limits.