China: Nvidia Loses Face and a 10 Million PC Order over Linux Drivers and NRE's • Hacker News Board

Re: China: Nvidia Loses Face and a 10 Million PC Order over Linux Drivers and NRE's

#31

Post by obtu » Fri, Jun 22, 2012, 2:22 PM UTC

megablast wrote: post #16

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #6

China is investing in Linux for one simple reason - they can have someone read the source code. A (low-level?) war is going on right now between US and China - and the battlefield are the hardware and software that runs the world. Can't read the code - then we don't trust that you aren't spying on us. Unfortunately I doubt they will extend the same rights to their citizens. On the Nvidia side, this is either the dumb…

Governments and Universities can already get access to Windows source. I think the difference is that China can write the source for Linux.

Some governments have access to that source code, but it gives them no guarantees that what they run is faithful to it, and it doesn't let them replace the usual products with something audited. Even if they can compile something out of that source, I suspect they can't boot or run the whole thing, and they certainly can't distribute it.

Re: China: Nvidia Loses Face and a 10 Million PC Order over Linux Drivers and NRE's

#32

Post by geon » Fri, Jun 22, 2012, 2:36 PM UTC

joezydeco wrote: post #30

lucian1900 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must have misread. If one has enough info about nvidia hardware in order to make a driver for nvidia hardware, the same info is not enough to make your own nvidia hardware clones.

You sure about that? Read up about ghost-shifts in semiconductor fabs. Bunnie tells a bit of the tale in his story about counterfeit SD cards: "Very low serial numbers, like very low MAC ID addresses, are a hallmark of the “ghost shift”, i.e. the shift that happens very late at night when a rouge worker enters the factory and runs the production machine off the books" http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=918

If you can run the hardware manufacturing off the books, I don't see how access to the driver source code would help. You would just ship the official binaries.

Re: China: Nvidia Loses Face and a 10 Million PC Order over Linux Drivers and NRE's

#33

Post by obtu » Fri, Jun 22, 2012, 2:37 PM UTC

dewiz wrote: post #20

vlasta2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, there is one thing about the title of this story that I do not understand. Why would a failed negotiation imply that "nvidia is losing face"?

as far as I can understand the convoluted article, the losing face part refers to Linus' outing

The connection they imply is doubtful. They give no date for the Nvidia negotiation, but (assuming it isn't misrepresented) it must have taken a lot of time (enough that the Chinese could pick something from AMD in the end). And I doubt Linus heard about it, either (the “behind the curtain reason for Linus' frustration” idea must have come from someone unfamiliar with him or the video of the event). The only commonality is that both find Nvidia hard to work with, in different contexts.

Re: China: Nvidia Loses Face and a 10 Million PC Order over Linux Drivers and NRE's

#34

Post by davidw » Fri, Jun 22, 2012, 2:44 PM UTC

y0ghur7_xxx wrote: post #4

I am happy that the Chinese invest this much in Linux. This obviously motivates big hardware makers to release quality/OS drivers for their products, and in the end I benefit from that as well. I remember the times I had to hack around for days to get some particular piece of hardware to work. That happens less and less, and now most of the stuff I buy just works. Video cards and capture cards are the big exception f…

> I am happy that the Chinese invest this much in Linux.

I wonder how much of that investment finds its way back into upstream projects. Really - I don't know one way or the other, although I have a suspicion that they don't really 'get' openness and so probably violate the GPL.

Re: China: Nvidia Loses Face and a 10 Million PC Order over Linux Drivers and NRE's

#35

Post by mchatfie » Fri, Jun 22, 2012, 2:48 PM UTC

IMHO it's a good move by NVIDIA.

The main differentiating factor between NVIDIA and AMD are the drivers. Release the driver source on any platform and NVIDIA loose their competitive edge.

They are leaps and bounds better when it comes to OpenGL support. I can't comment from a DirectX perspective, but they always seem to be pushing the boundaries where AMD play catch up.

This would be worth hundreds of millions so a 10 million order has to be taken in perspective.

Re: China: Nvidia Loses Face and a 10 Million PC Order over Linux Drivers and NRE's

#36

Post by joezydeco » Fri, Jun 22, 2012, 3:07 PM UTC

geon wrote: post #32

joezydeco wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sure about that? Read up about ghost-shifts in semiconductor fabs. Bunnie tells a bit of the tale in his story about counterfeit SD cards: "Very low serial numbers, like very low MAC ID addresses, are a hallmark of the “ghost shift”, i.e. the shift that happens very late at night when a rouge worker enters the factory and runs the production machine off the books" http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=918

If you can run the hardware manufacturing off the books, I don't see how access to the driver source code would help. You would just ship the official binaries.

The point was that you don't need to know anything about the driver or hardware to make clones. There are other ways.

Re: China: Nvidia Loses Face and a 10 Million PC Order over Linux Drivers and NRE's

#37

Post by rbanffy » Fri, Jun 22, 2012, 3:39 PM UTC

mchatfie wrote: post #35

IMHO it's a good move by NVIDIA. The main differentiating factor between NVIDIA and AMD are the drivers. Release the driver source on any platform and NVIDIA loose their competitive edge. They are leaps and bounds better when it comes to OpenGL support. I can't comment from a DirectX perspective, but they always seem to be pushing the boundaries where AMD play catch up. This would be worth hundreds of millions so a 1…

Yet, their proprietary drivers are a problem for many clients. If I spend US$ 1000 troubleshooting a multi-GPU number crusher that's money I could have spent in better hardware with drivers that just worked.

Re: China: Nvidia Loses Face and a 10 Million PC Order over Linux Drivers and NRE's

#38

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Jun 22, 2012, 3:39 PM UTC

joezydeco wrote: post #36

geon wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can run the hardware manufacturing off the books, I don't see how access to the driver source code would help. You would just ship the official binaries.

The point was that you don't need to know anything about the driver or hardware to make clones. There are other ways.

Which continues to moot the relevant point: Nvidia are withholding necessary software specs which not only aren't useful in reengineering their hardware, but which fail to protect against fully independent attacks (ghost shift manufacture) which at least allow duplication of current physical product if not producing a superior hardware product.

Re: China: Nvidia Loses Face and a 10 Million PC Order over Linux Drivers and NRE's

#39

Post by rbanffy » Fri, Jun 22, 2012, 3:41 PM UTC

anonymfus wrote: post #10

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #6

China is investing in Linux for one simple reason - they can have someone read the source code. A (low-level?) war is going on right now between US and China - and the battlefield are the hardware and software that runs the world. Can't read the code - then we don't trust that you aren't spying on us. Unfortunately I doubt they will extend the same rights to their citizens. On the Nvidia side, this is either the dumb…

Microsoft provides Windows and Office source code for Chinese government since 2003 as part of Microsoft Government Security Program.

Does the Chinese government compiles and builds their own version or they trust Microsoft will use the exact same source they have shown?

In Brazil we had some interesting questioning regarding the security of electronic voting systems - in 2002, I was on the team that developed the WinCE version of the electronic ballot - we had the source for the application and some of the device drivers, but we didn't have the sources for the compilers, libraries and operating system. Any of those layers could harbor a known (or unknown) backdoor that could allow tampering with the voting data.

I'm pretty sure my compiler was clean (I installed my development machine from my MSDN subscription CDs before the corporate IT folks could get their hands on it, so I imagine nobody could have sneaked into my house to place the CDs in my backpack)

Re: China: Nvidia Loses Face and a 10 Million PC Order over Linux Drivers and NRE's

#40

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Jun 22, 2012, 3:44 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #34

y0ghur7_xxx wrote: post #4

I am happy that the Chinese invest this much in Linux. This obviously motivates big hardware makers to release quality/OS drivers for their products, and in the end I benefit from that as well. I remember the times I had to hack around for days to get some particular piece of hardware to work. That happens less and less, and now most of the stuff I buy just works. Video cards and capture cards are the big exception f…

> I am happy that the Chinese invest this much in Linux. I wonder how much of that investment finds its way back into upstream projects. Really - I don't know one way or the other, although I have a suspicion that they don't really 'get' openness and so probably violate the GPL.

The ultimate incentive to contribute is that maintaining your own separate fork of development (and backporting/merging upstream changes) eventually becomes too challenging for most organizations.

Now, for an organization operating at China scale, it's possible that a fork could be sustained (so, the "China Syndrome" becomes the "China Fork"), but it's likely still not an optimal strategy, and for mundane areas there could still be substantial leak-back.

So long as changes aren't distributed "outside the organization" (quotes applied in context of defining "organization" relative to a Communist state in which nominally all property is State property), legal GPL code release requirements aren't triggered. Though you and what nuclear-tipped army plan on enforcing that against Beijing is of course another matter.