Comparison of Talos™ with Existing Libre and Non-Libre Machines
 
RCS Talos™ IBM S822LC Tyan GN70-BP010 Tyan TN71-BP012 ASUS KGPE-D16 Lenovo T400 SuperMicro X10SRL-F ORWL EOMA68-A20 ASUS C201
Form Factor ATX Mainboard 2U Server 2U Server 2U Server EATX Mainboard Laptop ATX Mainboard Proprietary Proprietary Laptop
CPU Package Count 1 2 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1
Architecture POWER8 POWER8 POWER8 POWER8 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 ARM ARM
Hardware Enforced Vendor Signatures on Firmware NO NO NO NO NO NO YES YES NO NO
Open Firmware Available YES YES YES PARTIAL YES YES NO PARTIAL[4] YES YES
Hardware Schematics Available YES YES[1] NO NO NO YES[5] NO YES YES NO
Trusted Boot with TPM and Owner Provided CRTM WIP[2] WIP[2] WIP[2] NO[3] YES NO NO NO NO YES
Hardware Virtualization YES YES YES YES YES NO YES YES YES NO
IOMMU YES YES YES YES YES WIP [6] YES YES NO YES
PCIe Slot Count 7 5 2 4 4 3 7 0 0 0
GPIO YES NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO
Open FPGA/CPLD Toolchain YES NO NO NO N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Raw GP Compute Performance HIGH VERY HIGH MODERATE HIGH MODERATE MODERATE HIGH LOW VERY LOW LOW
Fully Auditable Firmware YES YES YES NO YES YES NO NO YES YES
 
[1] OPF Members Only, CDA Restricted
[2] Hardware capable, software still under development
[3] Lack of open firmware makes owner-controlled trusted boot unavailable
[4] Multiple closed binary files are required to boot. At least one of them (the ME) is signed by Intel and can never be replaced with a libre alternative.
[5] We are aware that at least some community members have access to the schematics. Provenance is unknown at this time.
[6] An attempt is currently being made to activate the IOMMU without blobs. It is still unknown if this is possible on this particular hardware.
 
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