NVIDIA's Signed Firmware Blobs Land In Linux-Firmware Git

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NVIDIA's Signed Firmware Blobs Land In Linux-Firmware Git

Just last week NVIDIA finally released the signed firmware files for the GTX 900 "Maxwell" GPUs to finally allow open-source 3D driver support on these latest-generation processors. Those firmware blobs are now living in linux-firmware.git so that they can be easily distributed...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NVIDIA-Blobs-In-Linux-Firmware

[Edogaa]

GM206? I thought they only released GM200 and 204... o-o WOOHOO D:

unless that is a mistake?

[Michael]

GM206? I thought they only released GM200 and 204... o-o WOOHOO D:

unless that is a mistake?

You can see GM206 is there if clicking the link, which is great but not unexpected nor does it require any Nouveau code changes.

[MuPuF]

GM206? I thought they only released GM200 and 204... o-o WOOHOO D:

unless that is a mistake?

Yep, I tested it, it works as expected and I got xonotic to run!

[Kano]

That sounds good but as nouveau seems to need binary firmware for VDPAU it would be good to have got those parts in linux-firmware too.

[DeepDayze]

would be good if Debian is allowed to host these firmwares say in the non-free repo as a package called something like firmware-linux-nvidia. About time Nvidia did this, considering all the bashing they got.

[timofonic]

Is this a good thing?

Well. It seems the day to have an Open Source firmware even for GPUs might be too far...

[tegs]

Yet another piece of non-free firmware for Linux Libre to deblob...

[Luke]

Is this a good thing?

Well. It seems the day to have an Open Source firmware even for GPUs might be too far...

Open source firmware only gives full trust if run on open source hardware, as literally anything that can be done in firmware can also be done in hardware. Most of the code for any graphics card is in the driver, much less in the firmware and less yet in the hardware I suspect. In addition to replacing hard-wired functions the firmware probably also operates as a "shim" to let one driver control many cards with different numbers of shader cores, different amounts of RAM, etc.

Firmware UPDATES can be a source of targetted attacks, the NSA is suspected of doing that with CPU firmware in Windows. In many Linux distros distributing firmware with signing keys not shared with the NSA means the package manager (also not controlled by the NSA) will complain if firmware is replaced. Too bad Nvidia probably shared the firmware signing key used by the card itself with the government, thus the need to install it from distro-signed packages only.

Here's an interesting thought though: if all cards moved firmware functionality into the drivers, and loaded part of the drivers into GPU ram, it would be possible for 3ed party developers to use the driver for a small card as the basis of a hybrid driver for a large card that disabled most of the card when not in use, so that huge flagship card would idle like the smallest HTPC card when the machine is used for something like web surfing. Imagine a huge tri-SLI machine whose whole graphics subsystem uses just the 6W a GT520 draws at idle under all the conditions in which that GT520 would be throttled down to 6W. The fire up a game and the rest of the main card loads the rest of the driver, then wakes up the other two cards. Now imagine doing this with three old cards you already own thanks to someone's contribution to Nouveau.

[chithanh]

In addition to replacing hard-wired functions the firmware probably also operates as a "shim" to let one driver control many cards with different numbers of shader cores, different amounts of RAM, etc.

Plus it helps segmenting the market by allowing the manufacturer to disable certain hardware functions in firmware, so they can sell them in more expensive products exclusively.

Firmware UPDATES can be a source of targetted attacks, the NSA is suspected of doing that with CPU firmware in Windows. In many Linux distros distributing firmware with signing keys not shared with the NSA means the package manager (also not controlled by the NSA) will complain if firmware is replaced.

Or the firmware could be able to talk to the environment and download updates for itself...