Tweet
Intel is an NSA-friendly monopolist with blobs on the hardware
As for Intel, their monopolist behavior and their connections to the military-industrial complex are all reasons to buy something else. I will never buy Intel new unless no other vendor makes a rougly comparable device, for "corporate" reasons alone. This does not apply to dumpstered or computer show Intel, only to Intel products bought new. For new AMD is good enough and does not fund all the things I use computers to fight against. For you gamers out there, suppose buying Intel meant your opponents got the in-game assets that would trade on the underground market for the same amount of real cash? Well, that's exactly what it would do for me.
With Intel there are plenty of blobs-the GPU ones seem to be mask-programmed into the chip (or on flash we don't know how to find or rewrite) so they cannot be replaced. Intel's CPU driver blobs can be overriden by updated versions from disk. That is allowed because otherwise a firmware mistake forces an expensive chip recall like the Pentium floating point bug did.
Even if there were no blobs, to be "turtles all the day down" open the actual routines invoked by every command would have to be documented. Tbere is exactly no difference between a non-replaceable microcode blob and a set of gates to do the exact same job except the dedicated gates will probably be faster.
The Nvidia situation gets into the disadvantage of a replaceable blob: the possiblity of malicious replacement. This is like Intel's decision to lock CPU multipliers in the P-III era because OEM's would overclock the cheaper procs and sell them as the higher-clocked part. Now they use it to demand an extra $50 for the unlocked versions.
With Nvidia, the excuse is the Chinese vendors replacing the firmware to fake a high end card. This could have been solved by locking just one part of the firmware: the part that makes the chip tell the motherboard which model it is! Suppose all parts of an unsigned firmware would work, but the chip on failing to detect a signature would report itself either as "non-genuine," or as the lowest model Nvidia made that year? If the alternate firmware was a real one from something like Nouveau, it would still function the same way but it would not report itself to a buyer as being something valuble.
Of course, any fraudster could load the box normally containing a high-end card with any old GPU and s sticker on it, maybe even a big fake heatsink. I don't know why they even bother with the firmware as they will be found out very quickly anyway when someone buys a card that does not perform even up to the lowest level card's benchmarks. Hell I've heard of wooden planks loaded into Ipad boxes and sold in parking lots, no firmware required there either.
Originally posted by GreatEmerald
View Post
With Intel there are plenty of blobs-the GPU ones seem to be mask-programmed into the chip (or on flash we don't know how to find or rewrite) so they cannot be replaced. Intel's CPU driver blobs can be overriden by updated versions from disk. That is allowed because otherwise a firmware mistake forces an expensive chip recall like the Pentium floating point bug did.
Even if there were no blobs, to be "turtles all the day down" open the actual routines invoked by every command would have to be documented. Tbere is exactly no difference between a non-replaceable microcode blob and a set of gates to do the exact same job except the dedicated gates will probably be faster.
The Nvidia situation gets into the disadvantage of a replaceable blob: the possiblity of malicious replacement. This is like Intel's decision to lock CPU multipliers in the P-III era because OEM's would overclock the cheaper procs and sell them as the higher-clocked part. Now they use it to demand an extra $50 for the unlocked versions.
With Nvidia, the excuse is the Chinese vendors replacing the firmware to fake a high end card. This could have been solved by locking just one part of the firmware: the part that makes the chip tell the motherboard which model it is! Suppose all parts of an unsigned firmware would work, but the chip on failing to detect a signature would report itself either as "non-genuine," or as the lowest model Nvidia made that year? If the alternate firmware was a real one from something like Nouveau, it would still function the same way but it would not report itself to a buyer as being something valuble.
Of course, any fraudster could load the box normally containing a high-end card with any old GPU and s sticker on it, maybe even a big fake heatsink. I don't know why they even bother with the firmware as they will be found out very quickly anyway when someone buys a card that does not perform even up to the lowest level card's benchmarks. Hell I've heard of wooden planks loaded into Ipad boxes and sold in parking lots, no firmware required there either.
(
Comment