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On Fri, 24 May 2013, Matt Lee wrote:
On Fri, May 24, 2013 at 10:04 AM, Gordon Henderson <gordon+lug@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:BIOSes can be re-flashed. As can microcontrollers. Even the boot-code for the Pi - that's "fixed" on the SD card, but loaded into the GPU - where do you draw the line?All of those things can be reflashed, so if the software you're loading on them isn't free software, you have given some of your autonomy to a third-party. You can buy hardware that runs a BIOS or bootloader that you can control with free software. Some microcontrollers too. For the Pi, I'd hope people are working to reverse engineer the proprietary firmware and replace it with free software.
Work is in progress to reverse engineer it and decode the architecture, but I've also worked for companies who've developed similar multi-core CPU/GPU type chips and the effort required to program them... Well, it's not for everyone - and once the instruction set and architecture is decoded they'll then have to generate the compilers or other tools you really need to write and test code for these little monsters, so I feel that even when it is reverse engineered it's going to be somewhat of a phyrric victory...
And ... I've also come to the conclusion that I don't actually care (about the Pi's firmware). I did think long & hard about it though, but for me, the Pi's firmware, stored on an SD card rather than in a ROM, loads the kernel - and the kernel & userland is something that we have 100% of the source code for and that's good enough for me - for now. Nothing can take the hardware away from me or lock it down unless Broadcom manage to wipe every single copy of the firmware out there - and that really isn't going to happen.
So I won't have the ability to re-program the GPU. I'm not losing sleep over it. When I want a programmable multi-core chip with a set of high speed internal busses and shared registers, etc. to play with - I'll buy one that's supported.
Gordon -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq