NVIDIA Alerts Nouveau: They're Starting To Sign/Validate GPU Firmware Images

[emblemparade]

Everyone who cares about freedom should be using Intel GPUs.

The people who would *choose* to use NVIDIA GPUs are likely gamers, people who already make many consessions to their freedom: most games are not free software, many of them use DRM, etc. So, for these people running a proprietary driver should not be unacceptable. So, the damage in this respect is not so big.

Still, it would be very sad that truly free operating systems would not be able to use NVIDIA GPUs. There are a lot of laptops and motherboards will built-in NVIDIA support, and free-software lovers will have to abandon them.

Maybe this will be good in the long run? If NVIDIA doesn't want to play with free software, then free software may take its marbles and play elsewhere. But of course it's good if there is more hardware competition in the free software world. I guess we'll all have to wait and see how this plays out.

[System25]

Everyone who cares about freedom should be using Intel GPUs.

The only problem is that Intel does not produces powerful GPUs. Some integrated crap is pathetic and only suitable for desktop effects, especially on hi-rez monitors. If Intel would do powerful discrete GPUs with PCI-E interface, it could be interesting option. But I doubt they will - they are not able to manufacture competitive GPUs at this point. Even AMD's APUs would beat them, not to mention mid-range discrete cards.

[emblemparade]

The only problem is that Intel does not produces powerful GPUs.

Sure, but that's fine for many uses.

If an enterprise needs to buy hundreds of computers for its employees to do desktop work, and they are committed to free software, than Intel GPUs would be the way to go.

Obviously, not good enough for everyone, but as I said: being a gamer and being committed to free software will likely involve compromises.

[GT220]

https://stallman.org/to-4chan.html

The latest Intel PC processors are useless in the Free World, because they require a proprietary program to initialize the memory and a signed proprietary blob in the northbridge chip.

Are you gonna listen to this person and stop using Intel CPUs which has far superior performance & energy efficiency as seen from benchmarks done by Phoronix?

Open source hypocrites, they're everywhere and generally don't know what they're doing.

However, the ATI drivers use nonfree microcode blobs

But it's fine when AMD does it, huh?

[Marc Driftmeyer]

This is a pure speculation. I guess NVIDIA has nothing against redistributing firmware blobs (after all NVIDIA drivers can be freely downloaded). It's just crazy open source fanatics who hate firmware.



That makes perfect sense. Modern GPUs are no longer just stupid video cards - they are computational processors which can perform many different operations beyond just computing geometry and then applying T&L, e.g. GPUs can work with system memory more or less directly, just like CPUs, so it makes sense to verify firmware to avoid nasty things which NVIDIA cannot control.

Besides firmware might control many crucial things like voltages, fans, etc., so this way NVIDIA guarantees that its products won't be misused and won't die due to some open source developer mistake. NVIDIA can employ hundreds of people to do proper QC & QA which is unheard of in the Linux world.



How so?

Michael, don't be a fanatic.

Agreed.

[Calinou]

Given that customers defrauded by these cards cannot do anything about it unless they are willing to go to China and sue in a Chinese court, some kind of defense is needed.

A possible compromise defense would be cards that when running unsigned firmware show a watermark screen at initialization, warning new purchasers that they might have been scammed. An even simpler solution would be for all Nvidia cards to print a BIOS/UEFI message identifying the chip at POST, with the code to do this located in the GPU itself and not modifiable by any firmware. This would permit any potential future development of open firmware to proceed, yet ruin the scammer's business. Of course, anybody will still be able to throw any old junk board in a box, call it Nvidia's newest card and dress it up as such, then sell one shipment only of the counterfeit parts. They would not even have to POST, so long as the scammer's truck is down the road by the time that is found out. A card with no firmware at all won't show itself as such until someone tries to run a 3d desktop or program, Nvidia might lock 3d to keep these cards out of OEM computers from China for that exact reason.

At least Nividia has specifically agreed to provide the firmware images in a form that Nouveau can redistribute. Still, I'm just damned glad that hardware good enough for my purposes with no checks for any kind of signatures exists today, this kind of discussion makes me wonder about stockpiling. I just hope the scammers don't start targetting AMD when Nvidia blocks them.

We've been down this road before, when Intel started locking multipliers in the 1990's, not to keep users from overclocking, but rather to prevent OEM's from buying the cheaper chips, overclocking them, then selling them as the higher priced chips and at the price of those chips. Fortunately they were unable to stop front-side bus overclocking on those chips and may not have wanted to, as this would not have been as concealable by an OEM.

Compromises suck. The scams were and are quite obvious in general. This isn't counterfeiting as the purchaser has bought “real”*NVIDIA hardware, it is just a bad lure (still illegal).

Having to ask for permission to redistribute sucks too.

[Calinou]

Everyone who cares about freedom should be using Intel GPUs.

The people who would *choose* to use NVIDIA GPUs are likely gamers, people who already make many consessions to their freedom: most games are not free software, many of them use DRM, etc. So, for these people running a proprietary driver should not be unacceptable. So, the damage in this respect is not so big.

Still, it would be very sad that truly free operating systems would not be able to use NVIDIA GPUs. There are a lot of laptops and motherboards will built-in NVIDIA support, and free-software lovers will have to abandon them.

Maybe this will be good in the long run? If NVIDIA doesn't want to play with free software, then free software may take its marbles and play elsewhere. But of course it's good if there is more hardware competition in the free software world. I guess we'll all have to wait and see how this plays out.

It's quite paradoxal: 5-7 years ago, many people used to play free/libre games with proprietary drivers, now most of them play proprietary games using free/libre drivers (at least for AMD and Intel, but I have seen some Nouveau users doing so too).

The only problem is that Intel does not produces powerful GPUs. Some integrated crap is pathetic and only suitable for desktop effects, especially on hi-rez monitors. If Intel would do powerful discrete GPUs with PCI-E interface, it could be interesting option. But I doubt they will - they are not able to manufacture competitive GPUs at this point. Even AMD's APUs would beat them, not to mention mid-range discrete cards.

Lightweight 3D games (or old games) will run fine on them, even in 1920 ? 1080. Most people aren't PC gamers anyway.

[Adarion]

It's all for your security.
Probably it is against the omnipresent terrorism.
Think about the children! Why doesn't anybody think about the children!?
It is just for your own good.


Same shit over and over again.
Any hardware flash protection (aka one single jumper) works better for most people to prevent malicious flashing. I guess people here are right about this reselling of old chips just with different firmware.

[nanonyme]

https://stallman.org/to-4chan.html



Are you gonna listen to this person and stop using Intel CPUs which has far superior performance & energy efficiency as seen from benchmarks done by Phoronix?

Open source hypocrites, they're everywhere and generally don't know what they're doing.



But it's fine when AMD does it, huh?

Seems to me loadability is Stallman's main concern and I just came up with a theory why: If you think maybe microcode on ROM stops being software and becomes hardware, it does not violate principles of freedom of software. According to this theory Stallman doesn't care about freedom of hardware. If any of you knows how to ask him about this, I'd appreciate information

[curaga]

Seems to me loadability is Stallman's main concern and I just came up with a theory why: If you think maybe microcode on ROM stops being software and becomes hardware, it does not violate principles of freedom of software. According to this theory Stallman doesn't care about freedom of hardware. If any of you knows how to ask him about this, I'd appreciate information

He's said it matters, but their time is much better spent on SW freedom, as everyone can develop SW with a $30 laptop, but to develop HW the barriers are considerably higher, up to millions. No link unfortunately.