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You can get a Hex Driver for the POWER9 HSF for only $12.50 plus S&H!

MIPS isn't going to replace your x86 desktop. MIPS certainly has been scaled up to high end computing before, it's not really well suited to fast desktops running a small number of tightly coupled threads (very dependent on inter-processor cache performance)

If you think it is important to use an alternative, then take a look at getting a TALOS II. It's a POWER9 based workstation that is pricey but not totally bananas. You do give up about 5% of performance on POWER9 when you apply the Spectre and Meltdown patches, which is not ideal but may be acceptable.

https://www.raptorcs.com/conte...

Expensive certainly but not totally impossible for a "mere mortal" to buy.

IBM provides firmware patches for POWER9, so your Talos II workstation is protected from Spectre and Meltdown.

In addition, When secure boot is properly configured, and if the mainboard is located in a physically secure environment (e.g., a datacenter or locked workstation case), you can be assured that only your pre-approved and pre-audited firmware, kernel, and user space components are executing on a Talos II system.

Is it? Everything I've read lately is the ISA is free, but there are plenty of blobs for the other components that make an actual processor. It has the potential to be a truly free processor, but the early players don't have the resources for that.

I think POWER9 implementations are, right now, the closest. Raptor Computing Systems is shipping what looks to be real nice, but real EXPENSIVE, stuff. There may also be some OpenSPARC stuff.

Something like this?

Also, I haven't seen non-server computers use Power processors either.

There is the Talos II workstation.

Definitely not priced for mainstream consumers. But not too crazy when you look at Apple's prices!

We already knew from their announcement that they were backdoors, and the Intel ME security problems confirmed this. In addition to documentation on how to use and disable the system, we also need software freedom—controlling our own computers requires the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify the software, and exclusive control over any encryption keys used so we can decide who else gets to control the hardware with us. Until we have software freedom these devices are not good at all, they are a clear threat to our ability to exclusively control our own computers.

This is also why computers with other architectures are so interesting and important. As far as we know POWER, PPC, and other architectures either don't have backdoors built into the hardware or the comparable hardware comes with user-revocable keys and respect for our software freedom. This is a good time to get away from Intel/AMD systems. They're not trustworthy.

According to https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOS... Raptor Engineering is working on Talos II. They claim it "Libre-friendly, powerful, and competitively priced the new, POWER9-based Talos II takes flight in early August 2017!" so not long to wait before we can evaluate the specs and price. Debian GNU/Linux has a POWER9 port which I'd expect would run on such hardware.

The POWER8 and POWER9 by IBM are completely open. See also: https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOS...