Is there really no independent options? I'm just picking who gets to spy on me? Second, I've never heard of these brands before. Where do I buy them? I'm curious of the price.
It would be nice to have something at the power level of a netbook that I could just use for personal internet use. Anything that requires more work I could use my current computer for but I don't need to give all of my internet data because I wanna fuck around on unreal engine or play a video game.
What do you mean by "independent"? For me it looks like making silicon from scratch in garage. It is possible, but with enormous efforts in time, money and zeal, but hardly you will be able to make something better than 6502 or Z80.
I'm just picking who gets to spy on me?
With FPGA option you are not. FPGA is just a tons of logical gates on chip that could be connected into some circuit described on the Verilog language. You compile that code and upload it to FPGA. Logical gates in FPGA connects together in a circuit you designed. You could get ready opensource CPU core, network adapter, display engine, memory controller and some other periferals, check the code, modify it if you need and upload into FPGA. That will be your own CPU circuit, under your full control, not some third-party CPU you don't have any clue about.
Drawback is speed. It will work but will be slow, something like 486 or Pentium I in best case. But if you really care about security, that should not stop you.
Same with cheap SoCs. They are cheap because they use minimal CPU, peripherals and so on to reduce chip square. Adding something like Intel ME means you need to add same amount of logic gates and some additional memory on chip, that will make it at least several times larger. So it would not be so cheap.
I think it is perfectly safe to use something made with something like lower Allwinner SoCs like H3, D1 and so on.
Also, if you have a way to find old Power Mac G5, last with PowerPC 970MP processor, you could just add memory up to 16Gb install Debian Jessie (last one with PPC support) or build Gentoo and have relatively powerful computer without any IntelME or something like. Problems will be with finding suitable memory and HDDs.
AFAIK, there was Apple laptops with PowerPC CPU, but I doubt their memory they could be upgraded to levels necessary for acceptable browser usage.
First Intel chipset series with kind of Intel ME ancestor was 900 series IIRC, so to have an Intel CPU without any ME you will have to fall to Pentium 4, which is hardly useable for modern internet due to RAM size limitations.
Also you could try to find something with AMD processor pre 2013, but I'm not shure AMD had no ancestors for AMT in older chipsets.
As you see, there are not much options for something that could be useable for browsing today. Either that cheap single board computers, either last from non-x86 computers with at least 4Gb RAM support.
There is also some projects like Purism, System76 who aim at making laptops free from any ME crap, but they are only partially succeed in removing ME.
PineBook could be interesting from that angle, because despite having Allwinner A64 SoC with ARM Cortex-A53 that have TrustZone, TrustZone is different from Intel ME/AMT because it is CPU mode and not a separate processor in a chipset running some code without usser knowledge or control. You could use TrustZone to make shit like Intel ME as smartphone manufacturers do, but you don't have to. If you run your own system and bootloader just don't use that CPU mode and that's all. U-Boot that is used on ARM processors as bootloader is opensource and don't need TrustZone. You could even use that TrustZone mode for your own purposes if you wish. Just don't run any third-party kernels with blobs or proprietary drivers for the sake of some higher FPS in 3D or video encoding/decoding. Use only mainline kernel and mainline u-boot and you will be fine.
PineBook is cheap, but you will not get perfect system out-of-the box like with Mac f.e. You will have to tune and adjust Linux here an there, may be read some howtos and forums, but I think it is closest to your wishes thing you could get with minimum effort and money.
There is also some new Chineese RISC-V based laptop "Roma" out there, but I didn't check it yet, and it seems to be relatively expensive. However it is much more powerful than PineBook. Don't know about proprietary drivers for it, may be it needs some blobs for 3D engine or video codec f.e., so it would not be so open.
Is there really no independent options? I'm just picking who gets to spy on me? Second, I've never heard of these brands before. Where do I buy them? I'm curious of the price.
It would be nice to have something at the power level of a netbook that I could just use for personal internet use. Anything that requires more work I could use my current computer for but I don't need to give all of my internet data because I wanna fuck around on unreal engine or play a video game.
What do you mean by "independent"? For me it looks like making silicon from scratch in garage. It is possible, but with enormous efforts in time, money and zeal, but hardly you will be able to make something better than 6502 or Z80.
With FPGA option you are not. FPGA is just a tons of logical gates on chip that could be connected into some circuit described on the Verilog language. You compile that code and upload it to FPGA. Logical gates in FPGA connects together in a circuit you designed. You could get ready opensource CPU core, network adapter, display engine, memory controller and some other periferals, check the code, modify it if you need and upload into FPGA. That will be your own CPU circuit, under your full control, not some third-party CPU you don't have any clue about.
Drawback is speed. It will work but will be slow, something like 486 or Pentium I in best case. But if you really care about security, that should not stop you.
Same with cheap SoCs. They are cheap because they use minimal CPU, peripherals and so on to reduce chip square. Adding something like Intel ME means you need to add same amount of logic gates and some additional memory on chip, that will make it at least several times larger. So it would not be so cheap.
I think it is perfectly safe to use something made with something like lower Allwinner SoCs like H3, D1 and so on.
Also, if you have a way to find old Power Mac G5, last with PowerPC 970MP processor, you could just add memory up to 16Gb install Debian Jessie (last one with PPC support) or build Gentoo and have relatively powerful computer without any IntelME or something like. Problems will be with finding suitable memory and HDDs.
AFAIK, there was Apple laptops with PowerPC CPU, but I doubt their memory they could be upgraded to levels necessary for acceptable browser usage.
First Intel chipset series with kind of Intel ME ancestor was 900 series IIRC, so to have an Intel CPU without any ME you will have to fall to Pentium 4, which is hardly useable for modern internet due to RAM size limitations.
Also you could try to find something with AMD processor pre 2013, but I'm not shure AMD had no ancestors for AMT in older chipsets.
As you see, there are not much options for something that could be useable for browsing today. Either that cheap single board computers, either last from non-x86 computers with at least 4Gb RAM support.
There is also some projects like Purism, System76 who aim at making laptops free from any ME crap, but they are only partially succeed in removing ME.
PineBook could be interesting from that angle, because despite having Allwinner A64 SoC with ARM Cortex-A53 that have TrustZone, TrustZone is different from Intel ME/AMT because it is CPU mode and not a separate processor in a chipset running some code without usser knowledge or control. You could use TrustZone to make shit like Intel ME as smartphone manufacturers do, but you don't have to. If you run your own system and bootloader just don't use that CPU mode and that's all. U-Boot that is used on ARM processors as bootloader is opensource and don't need TrustZone. You could even use that TrustZone mode for your own purposes if you wish. Just don't run any third-party kernels with blobs or proprietary drivers for the sake of some higher FPS in 3D or video encoding/decoding. Use only mainline kernel and mainline u-boot and you will be fine.
PineBook is cheap, but you will not get perfect system out-of-the box like with Mac f.e. You will have to tune and adjust Linux here an there, may be read some howtos and forums, but I think it is closest to your wishes thing you could get with minimum effort and money.
There is also some new Chineese RISC-V based laptop "Roma" out there, but I didn't check it yet, and it seems to be relatively expensive. However it is much more powerful than PineBook. Don't know about proprietary drivers for it, may be it needs some blobs for 3D engine or video codec f.e., so it would not be so open.