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Intel Skylake & Broxton Graphics Processors To Start Mandating Binary Blobs
An anonymous reader writes: Intel has often been portrayed as the golden child within the Linux community and by those desiring a fully-free system without tainting their kernel with binary blobs while wanting a fully-supported open-source driver. The Intel Linux graphics driver over the years hasn't required any firmware blobs for acceleration, compared to AMD's open-source driver having many binary-only microcode files and Nouveau also needing blobs — including firmware files that NVIDIA still hasn't released for their latest GPUs. However, beginning with Intel Skylake and Broxton CPUs, their open-source driver will now too require closed-source firmware. The required "GuC" and "DMC" firmware files are for handling the new hardware's display microcontroller and workload scheduling engine. These firmware files are explicitly closed-source licensed and forbid any reverse-engineering. What choices are left for those wanting a fully-free, de-blobbed system while having a usable desktop?
If the same blob was included in chip's ROM, nobody would think it's different from before right? The only difference here is that Intel is saving some money by not having a flashable ROM in the chip and instead having host OS provide the same blob on each boot. It's not like Windows driver gets a better blob or accesses some secret features not given to Linux developers.
If you are interested in open source hardware this is not in. But open sourcing all code running on main CPU is a significant step in itself and has many practical advantages (like being able to run/write whatever OS you want).
If community has done more with existing open hardware contributions like OpenSparc, I think we would see many new ones.
"These firmware files are explicitly closed-source licensed and forbid any reverse-engineering."
Forbidding any reverse-engineering? I guess Intel will not be released this in Europe then.