Re: The Rockchip RK3328 and RK3399 are fully usable with libre software. What about the RK3588?
> [...] They both use the Rockchip RK3588 CPU and are pretty powerful. I haven't heard much about them from a freedom perspective though. [...]
Unfortunately, the RAM training code required to boot these is proprietary.
You can verify by looking at the documentation of Das U-Boot (the bootloader used on most RockChip-powered devices I know). Here[1] is an explanation of the situation and immediately below are the instructions on building U-Boot for various boards. You can see that for e.g. rk3568 and rk3588 boards there's a need to point the build system to the appropriate ROCKCHIP_TPL binary. For certain other SoCs (the ones we came to know as "freedom friendly") this is not necessary.
Also, the docs are generated from U-Boot's git tree. You can assume they are up-to-date.
[1] https://docs.u-boot.org/en/latest/board/rockchip/rockchip.html#tpl
And I was really looking forward to get a board with a RK3588. This is really disappointing.
Nvm, Its not ironic, I thought RK3588 was older... very strange.
Welp pity either way.
Good thing other alternatives exist... such as libre-soc, risc-v or microwatt.
Even if its too soon to use them.
Although, glad other arm64 stuff is available.