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A line in the sand for graphics driversA line in the sand for graphics driversPosted Jul 5, 2010 16:14 UTC (Mon) by smurf (subscriber, #17840)In reply to: A line in the sand for graphics drivers by drag Parent article: A line in the sand for graphics drivers They have contractual obligations with other vendors to keep some aspects of their hardware secret. This is due to the DRM requirements they have to face. DRM implies that somewhere there's encrypted / obfuscated content which some piece of code and/or hardware decrypts before displaying, and that said code needs to be coupled to the displaying hardware -- tightly enough that one cannot just capture the output. Hardware coupling is obviously not a problem in a smartphone (unlike HDMI). That leaves the actual de-obfuscating part of the source code, which is easily removed from any otherwise-open-source driver program.
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A line in the sand for graphics drivers Posted Jul 5, 2010 16:20 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
> Hardware coupling is obviously not a problem in a smartphone (unlike HDMI).
I think that is a poor assumption to make. How many PowerVR video devices are used in set-top boxes, televisions, and other devices? I don't know the answer, but it's certainly a large number of devices.
Plus there are phones that do actually have HDMI output, many of those that do are Android devices.
Unfortunately there is plenty of DRM in cell-phone and ARM-style devices.
> encrypted / obfuscated
Yeah. DRM implies Obfuscation really only. Encryption is usually used as part of the process because it's very effective in terms of protection during transport, but it's useless as a mechanism on the actual end user's device itself. So DRM depends entirely on obfuscation to work properly.
DRM is much less of a issue now then it's been in the past, but the effects of it is going to linger on for some years.
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