NVIDIA Begins Requiring Signed GPU Firmware Images

An anonymous reader writes: In a blow to those working on open-source drivers, soft-mods for enhancing graphics cards, and the Chinese knock-offs of graphics cards, NVIDIA has begun signing and validating GPU firmware images. With the latest-generation Maxwell GPUs, not all engine functionality is being exposed unless the hardware detects the firmware image was signed by NVIDIA. This is a setback to the open-source Nouveau Linux graphics driver but they're working towards a solution where NVIDIA can provide signed, closed-source firmware images to the driver project for redistribution. Initially the lack of a signed firmware image will prevent some thermal-related bits from being programmed but with future hardware the list of requirements is expected to rise.

Comments

Alibaba

[rsilvergun]

I'm guessing this is a response to Alibaba, where you can buy a $300 graphics card for $100 so long as you're OK with being an $80 card with a flashed bios. Remember folks, if it looks too good to be true it probably is :(.

Re:Alibaba

[ThatsMyNick]

They are selling nvidia cards with a modded firmware? Why? Nvidia is going to change their hardware, and hardware will only accept signed firmware. Fake cards, can choose to simply not do any signature checks on their hardware. Unless the fake cards are real nvidia cards, which for some reason run a modded firmware instead of nvidia singed firmwares, this will have no effect on them.

This is to simply prevent modding. Modded firmware often pushed the hardware beyond the recommended limits. This is more like some of the android phones only accepting signed firmware.

Re:Alibaba

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you understand what these fake cards are.

They are legitimate $80 nvidia cards, flashed with modded firmware to enable cores and clock speeds that the silicon is incapable of handling (Hence why the chip became an $80 card in the first place, instead of a $300 card).

The modder then puts the flashed $80 card on e-bay for $200 and makes a sweet profit.

Re:Alibaba

[Baloroth]

They are selling nvidia cards with a modded firmware? Why? Nvidia is going to change their hardware, and hardware will only accept signed firmware. Fake cards, can choose to simply not do any signature checks on their hardware. Unless the fake cards are real nvidia cards, which for some reason run a modded firmware instead of nvidia singed firmwares, this will have no effect on them.

That's exactly what they are. It's pretty trivial to take, say, GTX 440, and reflash the firmware to report that it's a GTX660. It's extremely difficult to make a fake nvidia card that isn't actually an nvidia card that actually works as a video card and isn't completely obviously a fake. The story was even on slashdot.

Re:Alibaba

[Mashiki]

Quite often they're not even unlocking anything. Rather they're doing a dirty hack to change the bios information of the card to display something that it isn't. This isn't all that unfamiliar to those of us who were in the industry back in the mid to late 90's when scammers were resilking(cpu info used to be silk screened on, to counter this it's why all cpu's are now stamped) Cyrix cpu's as AMD and Intel. You only found out what the CPU actually was, when you plugged it into the board and it said "cyrix." And while there are cases of people doing this to binned parts, most of the time the links to enable those pathways are cut before they're made into a gpu to stop people from doing exactly that. And if you're wondering why, it's because Intel ran into a massive problem where fly-by-night companies would unlock the binned CPU, and then actually flashing the microcode to change what the CPU was.

The cheap and dirty way to unlock CPU's during that time period was to use a graphite pencil across a unfinished path. I think it was pin 14 or 23 on the board. Very nasty problems with Slot 1 cpus.

f**k nvidia...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. F**k Nvidia for keeping scammers from selling faulty video cards with hacked bios's.

How dare they protect their brand integrity!

As Linus said "Fuck you NVIDIA"

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely it is impossible to have an opensource software if it needs a key to build it into a runnable program?

I mean you have the binary but you cannot recreate it from the source without that key to sign it with. The key is part of the source and you don't have it.

Re:f**k nvidia...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense, it's not on Nvidia to stop fake cards, its on law enforcement. All they are doing is fucking everyone into having to use their signed firmware. Its another avenue for NSA style snooping from public and private parties without you ever knowing. No code reviews, no way to know if that signed firmware is actually what you would've compiled from any code snippets they may provide. No way to know if other functions are being executed from withing the code without your knowledge.

Re:Fuck That Shit!

[goarilla]

- To implement a chain of trust.
- To tighten their control.on the hardware you paid good money for.
- To fight terrorism, childporn, illegal goods.

Re:Fuck That Shit!

[Anonymous Coward]

So that they can pretend to sell hardware while maintaining permanent control of it?

Re:f**k nvidia...

[west]

Nonsense, it's not on Nvidia to stop fake cards, its on law enforcement.

Actually, if it cuts their into sales because purchasing NVidia is perceived as risky, then it makes complete commercial sense to make changes to protect people who think they're purchasing NVidia. It's straight dollars and cents.

Now perhaps NVidia is only using this as an excuse to launch their evil conspiracy, but as excuses go, it's completely legit.

(And while I'd love to make fun of you for the evil conspiracy business, the NSA's actual shenanigans have made that impossible. When the utterly improbable has turned out to be true, the completely ridiculous now becomes only highly unlikely...)

Well that's just it

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had it. I don't understand why they don't just release all of the specs of the cards. Why don't they give them away for free? Or provide a 3D-printable download at the very least. Fuck nVidia!

Re:Not really new practice for Linux.

[Greyfox]

On the other hand, nothing tastes quite as good as the tears of an engineering group that put several million dollars into R&D for a DRM scheme, just to have it broken by a Swedish teenager three days after their product goes live.

that's sorta the problem

[rsilvergun]

they are capable for a little while. Usually the 90 days to get out of any warranty work. Maybe a few of 'em even run at the clock freqs without crashing. It's not just clock freq either. Nvidia shuts off broken cores in software. You're games might run but they'll crash a lot. What Nvidia's worried about is that You'll blame them for a buggy card and go buy AMD. It has major brand damage potential especially with Alibaba about to become a household word what with their IPO.

Re:that's sorta the problem

[Luckyo]

You don't understand. All companies, AMD and Nvidia manufacture certain chips. Each chip has certain failure rates. When certain amount of cores fails, they are switched off in software and sold for less.

AMD does this. Nvidia does this. Pretty much everyone making complex chips does this. It's massively uneconomical to throw away an entire chip over partial failures.

Re:that's sorta the problem

[HiThere]

You aren't understanding. Since it was explained fairly clearly, I'd guess you don't want to understand. But I'll try again anyway.

These chips are broken. So they are sold cheap. You don't want to pay full price for seconds. Before they sell them, they use software to set the broken parts as not working. Some of them aren't broken enough that you'll immediately notice, but that doesn't mean they aren't broken.

Usually the breaks are only in one area. Some die didn't burn properly, or traces weren't properly laid down. Whatever. So that area is sealed off. The manufacturer doesn't do a detailed investigation of exactly what's broken, just one that's good enough so they can figure out what needs to be sealed off to have a working chip. Then the sell the working chip (with reduced functionality) for a much cheaper price.

So if you don't need the full functions of the chip, you can buy the cheaper, reduced functionality, model at a cheaper price.

IC manufacturers have been doing this since the i8086, or maybe the i80186. (Intel was the first one I ever heard of doing it.)

This is a deal for those who don't need the functionality of the full model. It also cuts the prices for those that do, as selling the seconds defrays some of the cost of manufacturing.

Those who are removing the imposed limits and selling the seconds as if they were first quality are the ones who are cheating the customers. They are also impugning the name of the original manufacturer.

Re:that's sorta the problem

[davydagger]

all of them, this is how binning works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_binning

Chips are designed for the max freq of the specification. If they fail that spec, they are retested at a lower spec, and if they pass that spec, they are sold at that frequency. Why else do you find many diffrent chips in the same family run at diffrent speeds?

Many times the chip is %100 capable of running at faster speeds, but they had too much of the higher bin, and not enough of the lower bin.

But yes, taking a chip that didn't pass a higher speed, flashing it to the firmware of its faster/more capable cousin, and then selling it as such is ripping people off.

Doesn't look unreasoanble (so far)

[marcansoft]

So, they're locking out things that can brick the card (flash ROM/fuses, screw up thermal sensors) and apparently a hint of OS security (the Falcons that respond to userspace commands can no longer access physical memory, only virtual memory). The latter sounds somewhat bizarre, considering the firmware should be fully under the control of the driver, not userspace (I guess/hope?), but not unreasonable. Maybe there are software security reasons for this.

Nouveau is free to continue using its own free blobs or to switch to nvidia's. If they start adding restrictions that actively cripple useful features or are DRM nonsense, then I would start complaining, but so far it sounds like an attempt at protecting the hardware while maintaining manufacturing flexibility for nvidia. This isn't much different from devices which are fused at the factory with thermal parameters and with some units disabled; the only difference is that here firmware is involved.

NV seem to be turning friendlier towards nouveau, so I'd give them the benefit of the doubt. If they wanted to be evil, they would've just required signed firmware for the card to function at all. The fact that they're bothering to have non-secure modes and are only locking out very specific features suggests they're actively trying to play nicely with open source software.

Not a big deal...

[JumboMessiah]

Andy Ritger at Nvidia is already in talks with Ben Skeggs and Martin Peres with Nouveau. They're are going to hash out the details at XDC2014. The impact for Nouveau is in the packaging and distribution parts of the cycle, not development. Also, it was Nvidia who reached out to Nouveau, not the other way around. Nvidia has their reasons for doing this, but it's not an anti FOSS thing. It's more likely one of the more sane reasons posted above.

So everyone just relax their sphincters a bit....