Phoronix Readers Are Still Mostly Relying Upon Proprietary Linux GPU Drivers

[Veto]

- A LOT of hardware don't need any firmware files to be downloaded...

Actually you might be surprised about what hardware that may have more or less visible firmware. For most it is embedded in flash or eeprom and only read/writeable via hidden vendor specific commands.
It is very likely that your harddisk, ethernet controller/phy, sata disk controller, sound chip etc. all have non-volatile memory that contains a firmware. It might not be necessary to download during boot, and it might be more or less simple (e.g. register default values), but firmware it is. Oh, and probably all your USB devices...
It is impossible to buy a PC today, that does not contain firmware.

[bridgman]

AFAICS linuxcbon seems to be focusing on firmware/microcode deployed as separate files rather than being built into driver binaries or flash images.

Not sure why yet, hopefully we'll find out.

[linuxcbon]

Actually you might be surprised about what hardware that may have more or less visible firmware. For most it is embedded in flash or eeprom and only read/writeable via hidden vendor specific commands.
It is very likely that your harddisk, ethernet controller/phy, sata disk controller, sound chip etc. all have non-volatile memory that contains a firmware. It might not be necessary to download during boot, and it might be more or less simple (e.g. register default values), but firmware it is. Oh, and probably all your USB devices...
It is impossible to buy a PC today, that does not contain firmware.

That's not the point, out of topic. I was talking about downloaded and distributed closed source firmware files. Out of subject.

[linuxcbon]

AFAICS linuxcbon seems to be focusing on firmware/microcode deployed as separate files rather than being built into driver binaries or flash images.Not sure why yet, hopefully we'll find out.

Because we are talking about "open source" GPU drivers relying on "closed source" files to work correctly. So they are not "really" open source.
And how to have a "real" open source os ? That's why the linux kernel dont accept those closed source files anymore.

[bridgman]

Because we are talking about "open source" GPU drivers relying on "closed source" files to work correctly. So they are not "really" open source. And how to have a "real" open source os ? That's why the linux kernel dont accept those closed source files anymore.

OK, now you're confusing me a bit. All of your questions were about when the microcode started being deployed as separate files rather than being built into the driver binaries. Those "closed source files" contain microcode images that make the *hardware* operate. They could be built into the hardware or stored in VBIOS.

Let's say for purposes of argument we told our HW vendors to buy larger flash chips for VBIOS and stored the microcode images there. Drivers would be exactly the same, other than getting a pointer to an area in VBIOS flash rather than using the request_firmware() interface to read files. Would that make the drivers "open source" ?

How about if in addition to storing the microcode images in VBIOS we had VBIOS code actually load the microcode images. No difference to the user other than being dependent on vendor VBIOS updates, but now the drivers would be "really" open source, right ? NOT ONE SINGLE LINE OF CODE WOULD HAVE CHANGED other than moving the microcode load from driver to VBIOS, but magically the drivers become "really" open source ?

Does that make any sense ?