A macbook pro 15" has a ~15000 score on geekbench, and Apple's A11 has a score that is almost at 10000. We are a generation or two away from ARM having the same power as top of the line laptop processors, which can free us from intel and the ME.

> Apple's A11 ... We are a generation or two away from ARM having the same power as top of the line laptop processors

Apple's SoC's, including the CPU, are designed by Apple, not ARM (the company). They run the ARM instruction set but the CPU core is not ARM's design. The last Apple chip to have ARM-designed CPUs was the Apple A5(X) with the ARM Cortex-A9 from 2011, every Apple chip after that has had a CPU designed by Apple. Additionally, the SoC most likely contains "hidden" core(s) not unlike Intel ME (like most SoC's do) that boot up the system and perform power management and other peripheral duties.

ARM is not the answer because they don't do their own chips. They license the technology and their clients are free to add whatever management engine hardware to their SoC.

An ARM-based SoC could be built without hidden hardware or firmware blobs but I am not aware of a SoC that could run on completely free and open software.

That'll probably be around the time they announce a management engine that is built into every ARM CPU.

The chipset firmware will still be proprietary, and ARM chips are very often configured with a "secret" core that runs only firmware based code that is invisible to the OS. Add in the fact almost all ARM SoCs integrate modems that are themselves turing complete systems that have total system access and have priority control over the host CPU and you have less power there than you do being able to kill the IME and rarely run coreboot.

I don't care that such things exist, as long as there's a way to completely disable them. It should also be possible to verify that they are disabled, and be sure that they can't be re-enabled by rogue software.

The approach of Intel and AMD is completely hostile to anybody who cares about such things.

TrustZone exists and is can be used for the same purpose as ME.

The ASUS Chromebook C201 and Pine64 are interesting, but I suppose a bit low powered. I'd be keen on replacing my ageing AMD-based desktop with an ARM system if the performance can be improved a bit.

Where can this non-backdoored hardware be bought?

Asus C201PA and Flip are available mostly everywhere.

Even Tesco was selling them a few weeks ago!