The State Of Nouveau; Still Waiting On NVIDIA To Release Firmware

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  • phoronix
    Administrator
    • Jan 2007
    • 67376

    The State Of Nouveau; Still Waiting On NVIDIA To Release Firmware

    Phoronix: The State Of Nouveau; Still Waiting On NVIDIA To Release Firmware

    Besides AMD talking about their Vulkan Linux driver and other AMDGPU driver plans, an update on the open-source NVIDIA (Nouveau) driver was shared today at XDC2015...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite
  • tegs
    Senior Member
    • Jan 2015
    • 137

    #2
    Is this signed firmware going to be free/libre? If not, its not really helping anyone as it is unethical to require this in a FLOSS code base.

    Comment

    • gotwig
      Senior Member
      • Jun 2013
      • 176

      #3
      Originally posted by tegs View Post
      Is this signed firmware going to be free/libre? If not, its not really helping anyone as it is unethical to require this in a FLOSS code base.
      Guess what? Intel does the same and nobody cries.

      Comment

      • sabun
        Phoronix Member
        • Jan 2013
        • 106

        #4
        Originally posted by gotwig View Post
        Guess what? Intel does the same and nobody cries.
        It almost feels like Intel can do whatever and still gets off scot-free. Out of all three companies, Intel is the worst in my eyes in the graphics department.

        Comment

        • tegs
          Senior Member
          • Jan 2015
          • 137

          #5
          The Linux Libre kernel (http://www.fsfla.org/ikiwiki/selibre/linux-libre/#news and https://jxself.org/linux-libre/) already removed amdgpu for 4.2 and they will for sure keep removing whatever Intel and Nvidia try to sneak in there. Its a shame these companies cannot play nice with free drivers. What would they lose?

          Comment

          • bridgman
            AMD Linux
            • Oct 2007
            • 13187

            #6
            We (and Intel) have free drivers. We don't have free hardware. Unfortunately the two get confused on a regular basis.

            If the VBIOS loaded microcode instead of the driver doing it there would be great joy in the land and everyone would think our drivers were free free free but EVERYTHING WOULD BE EXACTLY THE SAME other than board BOM costs being a dollar or two higher.
            Test signature

            Comment

            • scottishduck
              Senior Member
              • Jun 2011
              • 498

              #7
              Originally posted by tegs View Post
              Is this signed firmware going to be free/libre? If not, its not really helping anyone as it is unethical to require this in a FLOSS code base.
              You appear to be confused about what ethics means

              Comment

              • OneTimeShot
                Senior Member
                • Apr 2010
                • 719

                #8
                Originally posted by bridgman View Post
                everyone would think our drivers were free free free but EVERYTHING WOULD BE EXACTLY THE SAME

                To be fair, I'm not sure that anyone would create custom firmware (AMD should enforce that cryptographically if it's actually a problem) all we are really asking is "what's in it, and (roughly) how does it work?". At a guess, it's probably really mundane stuff anyway:

                - Huffman codes for the H265 decoder
                - Temperatures at which the fans kick in (change this and your GPU will melt)
                - Lookup tables for microcode implementation of instructions
                - Backdoor for the NSA
                - Card features, number of HDMI connectors, version numbers, startup test code

                It's probably a 50 page document at most. Also, it'll give your lawyers complicated stuff to do, which surely is the fun part? Don't forget, the exciting toys are the ones that you're not allowed

                Comment

                • ssokolow
                  Senior Member
                  • Nov 2013
                  • 5108

                  #9
                  Originally posted by OneTimeShot View Post


                  To be fair, I'm not sure that anyone would create custom firmware (AMD should enforce that cryptographically if it's actually a problem)
                  Probably worried about the reason nVidia had to cryptographically enforce. Chinese counterfeiters were making crappy nVidia cards pretend to be expensive nVidia cards in much the same way that counterfeit flash memory devices have their memory controllers hacked to claim to have more space than they actually have and then silently corrupt your data.

                  Comment

                  • raulromania
                    Junior Member
                    • May 2008
                    • 20

                    #10
                    I don't get it... Why is everybody thinking at GTX 900 series when Maxwell is mentioned. My HP Envy Notebook has a GTX 850M "Maxwell" GPU.

                    Comment

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