NVIDIA Sent Out Some Fresh Nouveau Patches Just Before Christmas

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NVIDIA Sent Out Some Fresh Nouveau Patches Just Before Christmas

Shortly before Christmas were a couple open-source Nouveau driver patches volleyed by NVIDIA. Some of that work is now queuing in the Nouveau DRM tree ahead of the Linux 5.6 merge window...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...ouveau-Patches

[aht0]

I don't even know how can those cards work using a recent driver.
They should be crashing at the unsupported instructions...

You got driver CD along with the card, no other driver wouldn't
usually work with the card, yes.
ebay used to be full of Chinese re-flashes with weird "brand names".

[lectrode]

Kind by nvidia. Dont really see the point of it though, since the proprietary driver works very well

The proprietary driver has notable issues, especially for optimus laptops or cases where you're using multiple graphics cards. Plus, the open-source graphics stack is much better integrated with the kernel than nvidia's proprietary graphics stack, and would likely be easier to maintain in the long-term.

I welcome any improvements Nvidia can contribute to Nouveau with open arms and rejoicing.

[AdamOne]

Kind by nvidia. Dont really see the point of it though, since the proprietary driver works very well.
If you want to be a "blob" free activist, then go ahead, Im perfectly happy with signing my soul to the devil and not worrying about hassle. Peace.

[RSpliet]

They started clamping down on the firmware / signing it due to Chinese knockoffs / cards getting flashed and rebranded as being higher-tier GPUs than they actually were in resale channels.

I doubt this explanation is true. They went out of their way to design a "signature check" specifically for the firmware running on the Falcon μcs, all of which get their firmware from the driver, not that knock-off vendor. The only "firmware" that is persistent on the GPU is the VBIOS, and although this too is now required to carry a valid signature, it's the one bit that doesn't have anything running on the GPU itself and - because it is persistent- also the one signed binary that doesn't get in of nouveau's way.

The attack vector they consider is more likely to be GPUs in the cloud. Here advanced attackers could technically upload modified firmware in a hypervisor, and use that firmware to get access to guest OSes' framebuffers and other potentially security-sensitive information.

[betam4x]

I mean, they only need to make the card identifier read only, not the firmware. Outside of that, I see little reason for nouveau not supporting 3D.

[tildearrow]

My understanding is that these would be cards from within the same family, such that they used the same instruction sets.

What about a Kepler chip posing as a Pascal one?

[phoenk]

I don't even know how can those cards work using a recent driver.
They should be crashing at the unsupported instructions...

My understanding is that these would be cards from within the same family, such that they used the same instruction sets.

[schmidtbag]

But if there is a firmware bug that only re-flashing will fix then it's not very helpful, such as the displayport port bug.......

https://wccftech.com/nvidia-releases...raphics-cards/

Fair point, though obviously Nvidia isn't expecting there to be firmware bugs. On the other hand, to assume software can be perfect and therefore doesn't need a method to be updated is naive.

[Slartifartblast]

Huh... I had no idea that was the reason. Makes me wonder why Nvidia didn't just laser-cut the GPUs, but, I guess locking the firmware is an easier long-term solution.

But if there is a firmware bug that only re-flashing will fix then it's not very helpful, such as the displayport port bug.......

https://wccftech.com/nvidia-releases...raphics-cards/