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Hackers Manage To Run Linux On a Nintendo Switch (techcrunch.com)
Romain Dillet reports via TechCrunch: Hacker group fail0verflow shared a photo of a Nintendo Switch running Debian, a distribution of Linux. The group claims that Nintendo can't fix the vulnerability with future firmware patches. According to fail0verflow, there's a flaw in the boot ROM in Nvidia's Tegra X1 system-on-a-chip. When your console starts, it reads and executes a piece of code stored in a read-only memory (hence the name ROM). This code contains instructions about the booting process. It means that the boot ROM is stored on the chip when Nvidia manufactures it and it can't be altered in any way after that. Even if Nintendo issues a software update, this software update won't affect the boot ROM. And as the console loads the boot ROM immediately after pressing the power button, there's no way to bypass it. The only way to fix it would be to manufacture new Nvidia Tegra X1 chips. So it's possible that Nintendo asks Nvidia to fix the issue so that new consoles don't have this vulnerability.
It could also be used to implement a custom bootloader stage that loads the next stage of Nintendo's OS, but ignore a bad signature so that it could have been modified to allow running pirated games. This is every bit as serious as the "sighax" one on 3DS -- a similar unpatchable vuln in the bootrom burned into the CPU -- except that sighax was discovered late in the product cycle.
Yes, people now use FLASH memory but place it into read-only mode. It is cheaper when one requires relatively large amounts of memory - as would be required by a ROM. There is probably a way to program the memory if you interrupt the boot sequence before the OS is loaded. One would require a hardware connection - such as JTAG. But from the perspective of the OS, it behaves just like a ROM.
Or perhaps there is a jumper to enable read/write access. I believe the Asus Chrome Box units protected their boot ROM this way. Only instead of a jumper you had to remove a screw.
To be honest, I've enjoyed the vast, vast majority of my gaming life on systems that would be considered so laughably slow and obsolete now that people wouldn't take them off your hands for free.
It didn't once affect my enjoyment of the games, my enjoyment of replaying the games, or the nostalgia of going back to those same games 30 years later (whether on original hardware or via emulation).
If you think that anyone who plays games care about how many MHz or how many CUDA cores or how much texture RAM a certain device has, you're sadly in the minority. I gamed through the home computer rivalries, the 8-bit and 16-bit rivalries, PC vs console, online vs local LAN, etc. and not once did I ever care about having what was technically best, compared to what played the games I most enjoyed.
Nintendo are pretty much the only modern console company that get this. All their effort goes into the game design and new, fun twists, rather than what texture fill rate they can achieve.
Even in my "PC gamer" years on my twitch-shooters, I still didn't really care about those people who bought the top-line gear, overclocked everything, etc. just to get a few more FPS or a lower ping. It was the game that mattered.
Same as car-nuts. I'm sure your car does 0-60 in some unfathomably trivial fraction of a second faster than mine. But that's not why I bought the car. Don't put your use case onto me, or entire markets of billions of people who "just want to play a game with the kids".