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posted by martyb on Monday March 07 2016, @01:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the Where's-Major-Kong-when-you-need-him? dept.

Liliputing reports

Most modern desktop and notebook computers ship with Intel or AMD processors and Windows or OS X software. A few companies are positioning products with ARM-based chips as desktop computers. But the Tavolga Terminal TB-T22BT(русский [1]) is something different.

This all-in-one desktop PC has a MIPS-based processor and runs Debian 8 Linux software.

The computer is made by Russian company T-Platforms, which also offers an SF-BT1 processor module for those that want to build their own hardware.

Both devices use a Baikal-T1 processor which is a 32-bit dual-core MIPS P5600 processor. Like the computers, the chip was designed in Russia, although it's based on work from Imagination Technologies (the company behind the MIPS architecture).

The all-in-one desktop features a 21.5 inch IPS display, support for up to 8GB of DDR3-1600 memory, and up to 64GB of flash storage. It has four USB 2.0 ports, a PS/2 port, Gigabit Ethernet, and a fanless case for silent operation. There's also support for smart cards.

T-Platforms is positioning the TB-T22BT as a device that can either be used as a standalone computer with support for Linux-based apps such as LibreOffice and Firefox, or as a thin client system that you can use to connect to remote machines using remote desktop software.

[1] The translation dropdown menu did not work. Google translation

Previous: Russia Plans to Dump Some American CPUs for Homegrown Technology


Original Submission

Related Stories

Russia Plans to Dump Some American CPUs for Homegrown Technology 33 comments

Announced shortly after the 1 year anniversary of the first revelations by Eric Snowden that American spy agencies have their fingers in everything, the Russian government will be funding a project to build a custom microprocessor. Codenamed Baikal (after the lake with Earth's largest volume of fresh water), it will be built around an ARM Cortex A57, a 64-bit architecture running at 2GHz. No core count or other details are available. First deliveries are expected in 2015.

The ARM architecture aligns with Vladimir Putin's goal, announced in 2010, to move all government computers onto Linux. It also comes in the wake of another large country's recent barring of some American technology in favor of a homegrown Linux distro.

Wave Computing and Others Adopt 64-Bit MIPS Cores 15 comments

Wave Computing Adopts Low Power MIPS 64-bit Multi-Threaded Core

Wave Computing [...] announced today that it has selected a 64-bit Multi-Threaded processor core from MIPS Technologies for future AI solutions. Wave will use the MIPS core in its next generation of Dataflow Processing Unit (DPU) chips that will ship in Wave's future deep learning systems to handle device control functions including management of the real-time operating system (RTOS) and system-on-chip (SoC) subsystem.

From a MIPS press release:

As design complexity and software footprints continue to increase, the 64-bit MIPS architecture is being used in an even broader set of datacenter, connected consumer devices, networking products, and emerging AI applications. In addition to Wave, companies including Mobileye, Fungible, ThinCI, and DENSO, among others, are using the MIPS 64-bit processor core as they develop ground-breaking AI applications. [...] Last August, Denso group company NSITEXE, Inc. announced that it licensed the newest MIPS CPU to drive enhanced in-vehicle electronic processing.

Related: MIPS Strikes Back: 64-bit Warrior I6400 Arrives
PEZY's Next Many-Core Chip Will Include a MIPS 64-Bit CPU
ARM Cortex-A35, Snapdragon 820, and New Imagination MIPS Processors
Linux-Based, MIPS-Powered Russian All-in-One PC Launched
Imagination Technologies Acquired for $675 Million, MIPS to be Sold Off


Original Submission

Zhaoxin KaiXian KX-6000: A Chinese x86 SoC 29 comments

Zhaoxin Displays x86-Compatible KaiXian KX-6000: 8 Cores, 3 GHz, 16 nm FinFET

Zhaoxin, a joint venture between Via Technologies and the Chinese government, this week for the first time displayed its upcoming x86-compatible CPU, the KaiXian KX-6000. The SoC features eight cores running at 3 GHz and increases performance over its predecessor by at least 50%.

The KaiXian KX-6000 is a successor to the KX-5000 CPU launched earlier this year. Both chips integrate eight-core x86-64 cores with 8 MB of L2 cache, a DirectX 11.1-capable iGPU with an up-to-date display controller, a dual-channel DDR4-3200 memory controller, contemporary I/O interfaces (PCIe, SATA, USB, etc), and so on. The key differences between the KaiXian KX-5000 and the KaiXian KX-6000 are frequencies and manufacturing technology: the former is produced using TSMC's 28 nm fabrication process and runs at up to 2 GHz, whereas the latter is made using TSMC's 16 nm technology and operates at up to 3 GHz. Zhaoxin claims that the Kaixian KX-6000 offers compute performance comparable to that of Intel's 7th Generation Core i5 processor, which is a quad-core non-Hyper-Threaded CPU. Obviously, performance claims like that have to be verified, yet a 50% performance bump over the direct predecessor already seems beefy enough.

Related: Russia Plans to Dump Some American CPUs for Homegrown Technology
Russian Homegrown Elbrus-4C CPU Released
U.S. Export Restrictions Lead to Chinese Homegrown Supercomputing Chips
Linux-Based, MIPS-Powered Russian All-in-One PC Launched
China Dominates TOP500 List, Leads With New 93 Petaflops Supercomputer
Chinese Company Produces Chips Closely Based on AMD's Zen Microarchitecture


Original Submission

Initial Experiments with the Loongson Pi 2K 26 comments

Debian developer Jonathan Carter was recently given a MIPS64-based motherboard which he ran through its paces. The board has a Loongson processor which is intended for both general purpose and embedded processing.

The reason why I wanted this board is that I don't have access to any MIPS64 hardware whatsoever, and it can be really useful for getting Calamares to run properly on MIPS64 on Debian. Calamares itself builds fine on this platform, but calamares-settings-debian will only work on amd64 and i386 right now (where it will either install grub-efi or grub-pc depending in which mode you booted, otherwise it will crash during installation). I already have lots of plans for the Bullseye release cycle (and even for Calamares specifically), so I'm not sure if I'll get there but I'd like to get support for mips64 and arm64 into calamares-settings-debian for the bullseye release. I think it's mostly just a case of detecting the platforms properly and installing/configuring the right bootloaders. Hopefully it's that simple.

In the meantime, I decided to get to know this machine a bit better. I'm curious how it could be useful to me otherwise. All its expansion ports definitely seems interesting. First I plugged it into my power meter to check what power consumption looks like. According to this, it typically uses between 7.5W and 9W and about 8.5W on average.

The Loongson processors are developed at the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in China in conjunction with the BLX IC Design Corporation, also in China.

Earlier on SN:
Is Low-Priced Computing Stuck With an ARM/x86 Duopoly? (2019)
MIPS CPU Architecture to Become Open Source Hardware in 2019 (2018)
Linux-Based, MIPS-Powered Russian All-in-One PC Launched (2016)


Original Submission

Russia to Build RISC-V Processors for Laptops: 8-core, 2 GHz, 12nm, 2025 15 comments

Russia To Build RISC-V Processors for Laptops: 8-core, 2 GHz, 12nm, 2025

Russian outlet Vedomosti.ru today is reporting that the conglomerate Rostec, a Russian state-backed corporation specializing in investment in technology, has penned a deal with server company Yadro and silicon design company Sintakor to develop RISC-V processors for computers, laptops, and servers. Initial reports are suggesting that Sintakor will develop a powerful enough RISC-V design to power government and education systems by 2025.

The cost of the project is reported to be around 30 billion rubles ($400m), with that the organizers of the project plan to sell 60,000 systems based around new processors containing RISC-V cores as the main processing cores. The reports state that the goal is to build an 8-core processor, running at 2 GHz, using a 12-nanometer process, which presumably means GlobalFoundries but at this point it is unclear. Out of the project funding, two-thirds will be provided by 'anchor customers' (such as Rostec and subsidiaries), while the final third will come from the federal budget. The systems these processors will go into will operate initially at Russia's Ministry of Education and Science, as well as the Ministry of Health.

Previously: Russian Homegrown Elbrus-4C CPU Released
Linux-Based, MIPS-Powered Russian All-in-One PC Launched
Programming Guide for Russia's "28nm" Elbrus-8CB CPU Published


Original Submission

Desktop and All-in-One Arm Linux Computers Launched with Baikal-M Processor 19 comments

Desktop and All-in-One Arm Linux computers launched with Baikal-M processor

The last time we wrote news about Baikal Electronics, the Russian company was offering MIPS-based processors, but they've now announced that several iRU-branded desktops and one all-in-one computer had been introduced with Baikal-M octa-core Cortex-A57 processor with Mali-T628 GPU, and support for up to 32GB DDR4 RAM, up to 3TB HDD.

The computers target the Russian market, especially business to business (B2B) and business to government (B2G) customers, with the use of Astra Linux distribution that contains Russian "data protection tools" such as ViPNet SafeBoot, PAK Sobol, and others.

[...] The all-in-one version of the computer pretty much has the same features with up to 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 3TB HDD, and a 23.8-inch IPS display with Full HD (1920 x 1080) resolution.

Related:
Linux-Based, MIPS-Powered Russian All-in-One PC Launched
Programming Guide for Russia's "28nm" Elbrus-8CB CPU Published
Russia to Build RISC-V Processors for Laptops: 8-core, 2 GHz, 12nm, 2025


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday March 07 2016, @01:24AM

    by Gaaark (41) on Monday March 07 2016, @01:24AM (#314661) Journal

    I didn't click around to check for prices, but i wonder what the trust level is...

    ...can i use it with more security than the stuff we buy here?

    Any Russian readers???

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday March 07 2016, @01:42AM

      by PinkyGigglebrain (4458) on Monday March 07 2016, @01:42AM (#314669)
      My first thought was "how secure is it" as well. But given that it uses Debian 8 you can verify the check sums of everything, or even compile/install the OS from original source. The only things I would worry about is some kind of iffy boot loader, systemd, maybe hard wired BS in the CPU itself, or some kind of SoC "shadow system" hidden in with the rest of the chips.

      All of which can, and will, be checked for as soon as someone in a cyber security company gets their mits on one of these units.

      tin foil hat moment aside, this sounds pretty cool
      --
      "Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by captain normal on Monday March 07 2016, @02:59AM

        by captain normal (2205) on Monday March 07 2016, @02:59AM (#314688)

        Errr...this is different from computers on sale here, from U.S. companies (mostly made in Asia), how? Sure you can still build your own desktop and boot it to whatever Linux distro you want.
        You still have to worry about iffy boot loaders, systemD, and weird stuff in the CPU and HD from China manufacturers etc. Do you trust Kaspersky Labs? They're Russian.

        --
        When life isn't going right, go left.
    • (Score: 2) by legont on Monday March 07 2016, @01:43AM

      by legont (4179) on Monday March 07 2016, @01:43AM (#314670)

      It's about $1000 currently (and rubble crashed recently by about 50%). Kind of ridiculous.

      As per security, they plan to use it for government and other sensitive applications.

      --
      "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by VDIdumbterminal on Monday March 07 2016, @02:07AM

        by VDIdumbterminal (2083) on Monday March 07 2016, @02:07AM (#314678)

        Sounds like a steal for applications where you can't afford US backed backdoors.

        I think we're seeing the next 'arms' race in terms of nation state security.

        • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 07 2016, @05:24AM

          by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday March 07 2016, @05:24AM (#314736) Journal

          The only real way to win is for someone to figure out how to fab/3dprint well-performing CPUs at home for cheap.

          In a world where Moore's law in being declared dead (Netcraft confirms it), it's possible that open hobbyist hardware not made in some Chinese factory could catch up to where Intel, AMD, GlobalFoundries, etc. are. Although I think there is massive room for improvement with vertical stacking being a leading candidate to improve multithreaded CPU performance by 1,000 to 1,000,000 times (IBM or Intel may figure out how to deal with the heat), and other possible black swan approaches like Optalysys.

          --
          [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
          • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday March 07 2016, @09:18AM

            by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Monday March 07 2016, @09:18AM (#314825) Journal

            Yes, this could be the future. These homebrew chips wouldn't even need to be as fast as the chips we are currently using. Because they would be cheap, you'd be able to have lots of them doing discrete tasks - You could run a small personal webserver or FTP server quite happily on chips with a hundredth the capacity we enjoy now. Your home automation wouldn't need a big chip, you could get by on a clunky homebrew cpu no quicker than a 386. What do you really need for your media centre? Especially if you split the work across it into multiple systems, ie a file server and viewing boxen.

            For gaming and serious work you'd probably need to buy a "real" system, but for a lot of the mundane computing you might be able to print your own. The diversity afforded by this open-source hardware should in theory help keep things secure, because there would no longer be such a monoculture in hardware or software.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @01:26PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @01:26PM (#314909)

              Your home automation wouldn't need a big chip, you could get by on a clunky homebrew cpu no quicker than a 386

              Right... So you want a 1um processor with about 275k transistors? And how are you going to manufacture it now along with required support chips? And then who is going to make all the software to run on those super expensive 1-off chips?

              Think before talking. The only reason why can buy a $5 ARM processor that outperforms the "clunky 386" is because someone invested BILLIONS into making BILLIONS of chips. And probably even more was invested into making stuff work for those things. If you only want to make "clunky" chips, then expect to only spend a few hundred millions on your home fab to make your one chip that does nothing.

              there would no longer be such a monoculture in ... software

              So, when can we start to see you volunteering to make new software?

              Also, if you haven't noticed, there is not exactly a monoculture in software.

              • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday March 07 2016, @04:01PM

                by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Monday March 07 2016, @04:01PM (#315021) Journal

                In 10 or 20 years we can expect home fabbing to be very sophisticated, working in multiple materials, at surprisingly small scales and with a combination of methods not limited to the simple pooping / cutting technologies we see now. Different parts of a project will be built (pooped, molded, etched, cut, grown) independently according to different methods, and then assembled all in one box. Also, alternative logic platforms (biological circuits, photonic circuits) may be more amenable to home fabbing than our current silicon.

                Technology is moving forward incredibly quickly. Computers & the internet enabled an exponential increase in advancement by connecting so many people and allowing them to build upon one another's work, by virtue of being able to make unlimited copies of information at very low cost. 3D printing threatens to do something similar with physical things: When you hit the point that a printer can print another printer, the price of the things that can be printed will go down alarmingly (not all things will be printable, and obviously material costs will still apply). When we reach that point the technology will begin to improve itself exponentially, just like the internet did. How much of the modern internet is built on work that was in the first place enabled by the advent of the internet? It will be the same for 3D printers: Some team in Berlin will figure out how to print a crude chip, just for the hell of it. Some kid in Botswana will look at it and suggest a method to increase the transistor density by 2%. Someone in Sao Paolo builds a C compiler for it. The Botswana kid publishes another small speed increase, allowing a robotics hobbyist in Maine to build a simple programmable robot for under 50cents. A robot enthusiast in Nanking finds this useful, but wants more memory, so finds a way to build implement that and publishes it... Before you know it you've got real computers doing real work, all available to download and print for little more than the cost of the materials. If you could go back 40 years and describe the growth of today's internet to someone, it would sound as science fiction as what I've just described to you.

                As for software... More people are getting more educated than ever. The open source movement will grow, even if it's only in proportion with population growth and the enfranchisement of large parts of the third world. More and more kids all over the world are growing up with programming being taught at the earliest levels of education. More and more people have access to computers and the internet. You don't think that in 10 or twenty years there will be more hobbyist programmers than ever before? Even the most obscure, esoteric projects will be able to find contributors because the pool of contributors will be that much bigger. Eventually 3D printing will bring about an explosion in hardware choices, just as the internet did for software. And for each new hardware platform that looks even vaguely interesting to a tiny proportion of those programmers, software will appear.

                Monoculture: At present your average home or business user has a viable choice between 3 families of operating system, and 2 or 3 families of chips. Granted, it's not technically a monoculture but it doesn't offer a huge amount of diversity, which makes life that bit easier for people trying to profit from attacking those systems. Today one well crafted exploit can target a massive percentage of the world's PCs. I'm not saying that every user will custom design their own chips and software and every piece of hardware will be as unique as a snowflake, I'm saying that you might have a few dozen chip platforms to choose from, and a few dozen viable operating systems. Most will be open source. Each will have its own strengths and weaknesses, none will be invulnerable, but it make be a lot more work for anyone aiming to pwn most or all of the systems out there.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @11:03AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @11:03AM (#314859)

            Perhaps some good news in this direction, recently announced:

            We are happy to share our FREE and OPEN [DESIGN] microprocessor system, PULPino! [pulp-platform.org]

            under the Solderpad license [...] a competitive, state-of-the-art 32-bit processor based on the RISC-V architecture, with a rich set of peripherals, and full debug support

            [...] PULPino is a mature design: it has been taped-out as an ASIC in UMC 65nm in January 2016. The PULPino platform is available for RTL simulation as well for FPGA mapping

            -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

          • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday March 07 2016, @08:02PM

            by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 07 2016, @08:02PM (#315187) Journal

            I don't really think vertical stacking will be the next big step. The easy parts have already been done. What I expect is merging light-pipes onto the chips. Light travels faster than electricity, so a larger chip can be as fast as a smaller purely electrical chip. This may go hand in hand with changing off from a silicon substrate, but perhaps not, as there's recently been reported progress in adding phtonic processes directly onto silicon. Eventually we *will* need to go more 3-D for better chips, but I don't think that'll be the next major step (and it's already happening to a minor extent, and will continute to).

            --
            Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
        • (Score: 2) by legont on Monday March 07 2016, @06:26AM

          by legont (4179) on Monday March 07 2016, @06:26AM (#314771)

          Perhaps... come to think about it, if Russians backdoored it (which is unlikely) they would not care, while if the US finds something, it would probably leave a little guy alone to protect the exploit. It'd be smart for Russians to dump it on the market for cheap though.

          --
          "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Monday March 07 2016, @01:50AM

      by frojack (1554) on Monday March 07 2016, @01:50AM (#314673) Journal

      I'd just assume its at least as compromised as anything sold in the States.
      I imagine most of the components come from China.

      So even if you put your own OS on it and assume any supplied drivers and the controllers are compromised on delivery, if not from the Russian's then from the Chinese.

      You have a chance of detecting some call-home compromise if you put something upstream of it and look for connections that you can't explain, and log them all.

      --
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      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @05:15AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @05:15AM (#314729)
        If you're an American, unless you're really that important to Russian or Chinese interests I doubt that they'll care about you. Neither country has an agency with the mandate and the budget to spy on the entire world either. On the other hand, if you're an American, it's a lot easier to become a person that the authorities in your country will look at with an evil eye.
    • (Score: 1, Troll) by turgid on Monday March 07 2016, @08:43AM

      by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 07 2016, @08:43AM (#314814) Journal

      It is completely impervious to Nazis and homosexuals. And homosexual Nazis.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @01:32AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @01:32AM (#314665)
    Debian 8... Hopefully by the time it becomes impossible to prevent systemd from infecting Jessie, there'll be something else we can run on it.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @01:14PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @01:14PM (#314899)

      Replace it with antiX

  • (Score: 2) by Arik on Monday March 07 2016, @02:04AM

    by Arik (4543) on Monday March 07 2016, @02:04AM (#314677) Journal
    Not touching that with a ten foot pole, and I can't justify it at this price point right now anyway.

    But it looks like a pretty good concept, I hope it continues, and improves.
    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 07 2016, @05:26AM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday March 07 2016, @05:26AM (#314739) Journal

      Couldn't you just install a different distro or BSD [wikipedia.org]?

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 1) by Arik on Monday March 07 2016, @10:41AM

        by Arik (4543) on Monday March 07 2016, @10:41AM (#314852) Journal
        Hopefully.

        If it came with a distro I would use that would make me more confident. But prior to Debian 8 it was a good distro, hopefully it's not so far gone so quickly.

        Just too much hopefully in there for me to pay premium for hardware, though, don't you see? Entirely too much maybe. For that price and that performance I can get a system certified to worth with Slack and OBSD and not have to wonder if I'm going to get screwed.
        --
        If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
  • (Score: 1) by cpghost on Monday March 07 2016, @02:20AM

    by cpghost (4591) on Monday March 07 2016, @02:20AM (#314681) Homepage

    While a MIPS P5600 is nice, a 64-bit 8 core OpenSPARC T2 [oracle.com] would've been much more nicer. I'm missing those SPARC-based workstations, and I'm willing to buy a SPARC-powered PC/Laptop with modern RAM and peripherals any day, even from an Russian manufacturer.

    --
    Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/
    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by dltaylor on Monday March 07 2016, @07:43AM

      by dltaylor (4693) on Monday March 07 2016, @07:43AM (#314791)

      Personally, having used, and programmed for, just about every CPU core out there, since I can't have an 88K, I think I'd rather have a MIPS.

      8 ins/outs/local/global is just too arbitrary for my taste; pass what you need, preferably in register, and have loads of "local" that the compiler decides need to be saved/restored.

      Back when both the 88K and 32-bit SPARC were current, the 88K at 25 MHz kicked the ass of a 75 MHz SPARC.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Monday March 07 2016, @12:36PM

        by TheRaven (270) on Monday March 07 2016, @12:36PM (#314886) Journal

        Back when both the 88K and 32-bit SPARC were current, the 88K at 25 MHz kicked the ass of a 75 MHz SPARC.

        The SPARC initially had a hugely inefficient software-managed TLB. It was common to spend 50% of total CPU time in the TLB miss handler. This was improved a lot in later versions. I'm not sure how bad the 88K was (also a software-managed TLB, as are most MIPS chips, but nowhere near as bad as the early SPARCs), but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the performance difference came from this.

        It's also worth noting that the compiler can use any of the 8 out registers as temporaries (not preserved across calls, but lots of register assignments don't need to be) and any of the 8 in values that are not in use as saved registers. That gives you quite a lot of space - it's pretty rare for register starvation to be a problem on SPARC.

        The S in SPARC stands for scalable, because different implementations are allowed to have different numbers of register windows. This ranges from 2-9 in implementations that I've seen. With small numbers, the fact that the overflow routine has to spill values even if there's nothing really valuable in them can make things a lot worse than if you have a more conventional calling convention, but with a larger number then the elimination of stack spills in the common case can be a fairly big win.

        SPARC is also a lot less likely to suffer from return-oriented programming vulnerabilities. The link register is never spilled to the main stack (it's spilled to the space where you spill register windows if you run out of hardware register windows), so no stack buffer overflow can allow overwriting the return address on SPARC.

        --
        sudo mod me up
  • (Score: 1) by bitstream on Monday March 07 2016, @08:55AM

    by bitstream (6144) on Monday March 07 2016, @08:55AM (#314817) Journal

    Specification: [baikalelectronics.com]
      * 2 x core P5600 MIPS 32 r5 kernels, operational frequency up to 1.2 GHz
      * Cache L2 1 MByte
      * Memory controller DDR3-1600 (max 12 800 MByte/s)
      * Power consumption below 5 W
      * Chip in 28 nm process
      * Integrated interfaces:
                    1 port: 10 Gbit/s Ethernet
                    2 ports: 1 Gbit/s Ethernet
                    PCI-e Gen.3 controller
                    2 ports: SATA 3.0
                    USB 2.0
    Tavolga terminal tp22bt [t-platforms.ru]:
      * Graphics card - SM750, 16 MB video memory
      * Memory 2 - 8 GByte DDR3
      * Sound codec PCM2912A
      * 4 x USB 2.0, 1 x PS/2, smart card, SD / SDHC / SDXC / MMC / MS, 3.5 mm stereo
      * 2 x 1 Gbit/s wired Ethernet or wired+SFP

    No price given so perhaps it's priceless! :P

    It seems capable but how would it compare to a standard Intel x86-computer in the GHz range? And regarding security. It's not system software one should perhaps worry about. But nefarious chip features which you can't debug in a normal way. Some nefarious bit string sent could activate all kinds of shit or just make the harddisc controller send bad code.

  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday March 07 2016, @09:15AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 07 2016, @09:15AM (#314823) Journal

    "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened."

    --
    Obi-Wan Kenobi feels the impact of TFA on Microsoft.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @01:29PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @01:29PM (#314911)

    If it had 32GB ram