Write to NVIDIA [LWN.net]

Write to NVIDIA

Posted Oct 17, 2006 6:04 UTC (Tue) by AJWM (guest, #15888)
In reply to: Write to NVIDIA by elanthis
Parent article: Local root exploit in NVidia driver

> As told by NVIDIA, releasing hardware specs is a legal minefield.

I wonder how much (if, of course, any) of that relates to possible agreements with Microsoft over informtion needed to tune the cards for DirectX.

I could see where Microsoft is happy to lend technical help on developing DirectX compatible hardware and drivers .. so long as none of that information is given to developers of drivers for other platforms. Not that those developers would care about DirectX, but it's simpler to just say "no" to releasing any specs than to carefully filter through the stuff and only release what you're not under an NDA to Microsoft for.

(Sure, NDAs to upstream hardware vendors may be important too, but there's only one 900 pound gorilla at the party.)

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Write to NVIDIA

Posted Oct 17, 2006 15:25 UTC (Tue) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link]

I doubt it's that complex.

Far more likely it's just a few chips used, ranging from anything from the memory controller to the DAC chips to the PCI/AGP bridge to whatever, which are necessary components of making the card operate but to which NVIDIA isn't allowed to release specs.

There may also literally be IP in NVIDIA's custom chips that they can't release, such as information on how to drive a proprietary, licensed compression engine, video decoder, or whatever.

NVIDIA may be capable of releasing some specs, but those specs may very well be too incomplete and/or organizing all those documents when NVIDIA has little to gain from it other than some half-functional open source drivers might be considered to much effort. Who knows, maybe they could even face legal action if they release docs to only their chips, as that would essentially be saying, "hey community, here's our stuff, now go and reverse engineer our upstream vendors' hardware, which'll be a little easier now that we showed you the shape of hole those components fit into."

Honestly, I think it's best to just stop asking NVIDIA to open their drivers, and if openness is important to you, then use a competing product. Intel's drivers (almost) open, and the OpenGraphics projects might actually release something someday. There's always older ATI cards, too.