01:32pabs: "NVIDIA and nouveau" https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/910343/e360e44a7a63b1b7/
02:08TimurTabi: "In the long run, it may not really make sense to pound the NVIDIA firmware API into the nouveau driver " LOL
07:09hell__: interesting that the GSP is RISC-V
07:14hell__: having processors with firmware for things like the memory controller (to handle RAM init and reclocking) makes *some* sense, if they are designed to "protect IP" while providing a high-level interface to do stuff
07:16hell__: RAM init (at least on Intel CPUs) is arcane dark magic, and it's very easy to accidentally mess it up in very subtle ways, e.g. https://review.coreboot.org/48550 ._.
07:21hell__: AFAIUI, it's probably the same with VRAM on GPUs, except that init is simpler (GPUs don't have DIMM slots) and reclocking is much more complex (no idea how it is handled in nouveau)
07:25hell__: while having blobs do things isn't great (most often, blobs can't be fixed), if they "don't get in the way" of getting things done, it's a reasonable compromise
07:32hell__: but the GSP feels like a regression: the graphics driver is still closed source, but it's no longer fixable
07:32hell__: in extreme circumstances, one can technically attempt to binary patch Nvidia's proprietary kernel driver ignoring whatever the license says. but if the GSP blob is signed, this is now impossible.
07:32hell__: sorry for the rant, had to vent...
08:06pabs: maybe there is a vulnerability in the signing. I thought I heard that the cryptocurrency folks got around the hashrate limiter somehow.
08:06pabs: OTOH exploiting that means DMCA violation
08:07hell__: DMCA?
08:09pabs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention
08:09pabs: (a subset of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act and other laws around the world)
08:13pabs: sounds like some/one of the 2021 exceptions may apply though
08:17hell__: ah, lawyers may not be happy about it
08:18pabs: yeah and if your code is on mainstream hosting sites, it can easily get blocked
08:18pabs: ie the list of GitHub repo takedowns: https://github.com/github/dmca/
08:19hell__: yeah.