Huawei and SMIC quietly rolled out a new Kirin 9000C processor.

Huawei and SMIC quietly rolled out a new Kirin 9000C processor.

Chinese foundry SMIC may have broken the 5nm process barrier, as evidenced by a new Huawei laptop listed with an advanced chip with 5nm manufacturing tech — a feat previously thought impossible due to U.S sanctions.

  • Zvyozdochka [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    7 months ago

    You can already buy laptops & tablets that come w/ Linux pre-installed & have open-source firmware.

    StarLabs and System76 being a couple I know off the top of my head

    • StellarTabi [none/use name]
      ·
      7 months ago

      You can, but most of those aren't very good, are too niche, and borrowing CPUs designed around the whims of Microsoft has me doubting their nativeness.

      • Zvyozdochka [she/her, comrade/them]
        ·
        7 months ago

        You're going to be waiting quite a while for a "Linux native CPU", whatever you mean by this. RISC-V is still a long way out from being desktop ready, but progress is slowly happening.

      • silent_water [she/her]
        ·
        7 months ago

        borrowing CPUs designed around the whims of Microsoft has me doubting their nativeness

        the major cpu vendors all work on the linux kernel because they need big server purchasers to buy new hardware. iirc, linux had support for intel's new efficiency core scheme before windows did for this reason - kernel standards are fairly high and it can take awhile for new features to actually land.

        I think what you're actually thinking of is Intel's management engine, which is a server feature they forced into every processor - presumably to encourage businesses to buy Intel (look ma, remote management) but that looks a hell of a lot like NSA spyware. AMD doesn't include their equivalent on consumer-grade hardware and their implementation doesn't allow for anywhere near the same kind of spying. obviously, open hardware would set all doubts to rest.