Software Rants 16: Binary Firmware and Trade Secrets

Almost a year ago, I built my grandparents a new pc with an a10-5800k processor, on the pretense that AMD is hurting and they contribute a foss driver, they deserve some support.

A year later, my grandparents are still regularly using catalyst on their Suse install, because whenever I plug in their living room tv via hdmi, the driver fails and I get two black screens, or the tv has color bars on it until I mode set the normal desktop monitor, and then we are back to all black.

Looking forward, in future computer builds, I am looking at parts not for features or performance or reliability but I look for parts that aren't binary blobs doing whatever the hell they want with no way to audit their behavior, in kernel space.

The problem is there is nobody on my side in this. Intel's chipsets are completely proprietary, with no open source support for them at all. Their processors are obfuscated trade secrets with opcodes to payload encrypted firmware blobs to modify the microcode to do whatever the hell they want at runtime, and their network controllers have binary blob firmware that might be broadcasting who knows what.

Sadly, though, they are the only vendor with an actual free gpu driver. No firmware blobs, no bullshit, relatively open specification. They don't support gallium, but really, thats their call. They waste their time, and everyone elses time, not using one stack, but at least they are trying.

However, on the other side of the fence, you have AMD - they participate in coreboot, their cpus are still trade secret proprietary mess but not as bad as Intel, but they use prorprietary firmware blobs with their gpus, and thus you can't reimplement their driver without reverse engineering that crap.

When it comes to processors in general, they are all bullshit trade secret messes. There is not one open spec cpu, even the Leeong chip from China licenses MIPS. So if you are stuck on some proprietary garbage, you might as well use the x86 chips, since at least Intel isn't profiteering off of IP law with their cpu design (AMD's contract with them is pennies on the chips they make).

So why can't I buy an AMD chipset with an Intel APU? I want open firmware across the board, because I want an open system where I can look at exactly how everything works and tweak it to my desire. But there is no way to build a system without someone restricting my freedom with my own hardware, and it sucks.

Meanwhile, Nvidia is off in la-la land, their proprietary blob graphics cards can blow me, but Nouveau is more open than AMD chips, since the reverse engineered firmware is foss! And they have open source drivers for their Tegra APUs, and they just license ARM cores.

I hope they consider making a Tegra 5+ based NUC, because I'd be interested in that. Kepler graphics on a foss driver + firmware, on a chipset with coreboot, and arm v8 cores I could live with. But right now all our options suck. If I had connections, i definitely have the desire, I'd make an open hardware company. But you wouldn't want to found it in the US, because patent and trademark trolling would crush you before you got off the ground.