After GuC, Intel's Open-Source Driver Prepares For "HuC" Firmware Blobs

[phoronix]

Phoronix: After GuC, Intel's Open-Source Driver Prepares For "HuC" Firmware Blobs

Intel's open-source developers working on their Linux DRM graphics driver have been working on adding support for HuC, a new firmware component to be used by Broxton and newer graphics hardware...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-Linux-Driver-Getting-HuC

[horizonbrave]

wasn't Broxton canceled?
Thanks Intel for all the blobs..

[Jumbotron]

Well...yes and no. The Goldmont based Atom iteration for cell phones and tablets was cancelled. The Goldmont cores for 2 in 1 hybrids, Chromebooks, cheap and thin laptops called Apollo Lake is coming out this fall. The desktop iteration Kaby Lake is coming out first of next year. All of which will have Skylake derived Gen 9 iGPU.

[kneekoo]

More blobs? I regret more and more having bought Skylake. It sucks, and it doesn't look like getting prettier. What's going on with Intel?

[chithanh]

It is not only Intel. It is a general trend in the industry to move functions from operating system drivers into embedded processors that run their own microcode. That way they can also avoid having to open source that code.

But yeah, Intel is kind of at the forefront of that movement.

[Gusar]

More blobs? I regret more and more having bought Skylake. It sucks, and it doesn't look like getting prettier. What's going on with Intel?

This blob is for hardware decoding. AMD has needed blobs for hardware decoding since the beginning. Nouveau can't decode in hardware unless you run a script to extract blobs from the proprietary driver. So you regret buying Intel over competitors that are exactly the same in this regard? Doesn't make much sense.

And for those who intend to mention the other blobs Intel GPUs also need nowadays... Same as above: AMD has needed blobs to run their GPUs since forever, while nouveau used reverse-engineered initialization code, but that's now gone since signed firmware is required (which fortunately Nvidia does provide for use with nouveau).

[Sonadow]

This blob is for hardware decoding. AMD has needed blobs for hardware decoding since the beginning. Nouveau can't decode in hardware unless you run a script to extract blobs from the proprietary driver. So you regret buying Intel over competitors that are exactly the same in this regard? Doesn't make much sense.

And for those who intend to mention the other blobs Intel GPUs also need nowadays... Same as above: AMD has needed blobs to run their GPUs since forever, while nouveau used reverse-engineered initialization code, but that's now gone since signed firmware is required (which fortunately Nvidia does provide for use with nouveau).

So much truth in this.

Too many opensource nuts around out there today just screaming "opensource this! opensource that!" without even knowing the intricate complexities involved in hardware design and operation. And not a single one of them got the balls to put their money where their mouth is by completely avoiding x64 and all known GPU vendors.

They can't do anything but they can only demand others to do it for them. How pathetic.

[bridgman]

And not a single one of them got the balls to put their money where their mouth is by completely avoiding x64 and all known GPU vendors.

There are probably still Mach64 (Rage Pro) cards/chips available somewhere... IIRC those were the last generation that did not use soft-loaded microcode somewhere.

[Gusar]

And not a single one of them got the balls to put their money where their mouth is by completely avoiding x64 and all known GPU vendors.

Where will you go, though? The ARM space is even more blobbed-up than x86.

[chithanh]

So you regret buying Intel over competitors that are exactly the same in this regard?

He wrote that he regrets buying Skylake. He doesn't say that he would have bought anything else instead.

Too many opensource nuts around out there today just screaming "opensource this! opensource that!" without even knowing the intricate complexities involved in hardware design and operation.

Those "nuts" are clearly seeing how companies move functions from open drivers into closed firmware (graphics and Wifi are the worst).
They are seeing how the average AMD GPU now contains an ever increasing number of command processors each running on a proprietary microcode blob.
They are certainly not oblivious to the undertaking of AMD to move more scheduling into the GPU, apparently again controlled by proprietary blobs.
If AMD's vision with HSA comes to pass, this means that a significant part of the code that runs on your computer in the future will do so on the GPU, under the supervision and control of these blobs.

They can't do anything but they can only demand others to do it for them.

Who demands anything? Even the FSF only say which hardware they can recommend and which they cannot recommend. They sometimes denounce especially insidious closed stuff, but that's about it.