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Why is it that closed source drivers are the norm rather than the exception for hardware companies? People need to buy your hardware to use your drivers. Mean

by csense 5y ago

Why is it that closed source drivers are the norm rather than the exception for hardware companies? People need to buy your hardware to use your drivers. Meaning driver development is a cost. The revenue comes from hardware sales. You're usually offering the driver to the public for free on your website anyway. Why not simply open source it? If you open source your driver, community developers could potentially give you free help -- e.g. porting to Linux, getting into the mainline kernel, fixing bugs.

zeusk 5y ago
Because of two reasons - driver can reveal internal workings of their “proprietary” hardware - they use driver features to further differentiate their hardware product But really it’s just old tradition and paranoia.
- tlamponi 5y ago
  > - driver can reveal internal workings of their “proprietary” hardware Every, somewhat solid, HW engineer from the competition will be able to still grasp those inner workings from a proprietary driver and the HW itself. In the end they cannot just copy (most) things over due to facing potential legal issues, no matter if the driver is foss or proprietary. > - they use driver features to further differentiate their hardware product > But really it’s just old tradition and paranoia Agreeing here, albeit AMD and Intel seem to have (somewhat) grasped that it doesn't need to be that way.
rock_hard 5y ago
It’s a mindset issue Sure, sometimes there is special sauce in the drivers too But mostly it’s just culture. Hardware companies also don’t like cloud software…because they think on prem is safer or whatever
- est31 5y ago
  Any company that is going to negotiate with a cloud company, or that is going to compete with a cloud company, should avoid using any services from that cloud company. Otherwise you risk giving them access to strategy papers, or even internal communication about strategies or negotiation limts. Cloud companies are some of the biggest customers of hardware companies like AMD. Eventually they will come to a point where they negotiate.
  - jabl 5y ago
    That's a pretty serious accusation. The reputation of things like O365 and Google docs/mail would be shattered if it turned out that MS or Google would be reading internal documents or emails of other companies for anti-competitive purposes.
    - d110af5ccf 5y ago
      > That's a pretty serious accusation. It was not an accusation. A risk was articulated. The sheer quantity of hardware purchased by these companies is relevant when assessing risk/reward.
tyingq 5y ago
Patents you have licensed, but do not own. And so your lawyers advise you not to release any source code.
- modeless 5y ago
  And all the ones you didn't license too, because you don't want any patent trolls to find out you're using a technique vaguely similar to some patent you've never heard of. Aren't patents great?
sobkas 5y ago
> Why is it that closed source drivers are the norm rather than the exception for hardware companies? Because when you want to depreciate your old hardware and want to push your customers to new one, open source driver that is maintained, or even worse, add features that should be exclusive to your new hardware, you have a problem. Planned obsolescence is the name of the game in modern hardware industry. And even "open source" drivers like mwlwifi show similar pattern, good look fixing their ¢¢^√°^¢^° firmware.
- sobkas 5y ago
  Also when you depend on driver to differentiate between high/low end devices, open source driver is also no. Eg. Nvidia, throttling consumer devices in favour of enterprise grade ones.
  - a2800276 5y ago
    Has this changed in recent years? Back in the days the consumer devices were faster but less reliable ( noone cares if two or three pixels are off in a 3d game). Cards based on the same hardware sold to industrial customers were just from better silicon bins run more conservatively. If you're running serious simulations you want accurate, reproducible results. Otoh, aerodynamic and seismic simulations can also be one or two "pixels off" and industry started to realize they can get faster equipment for cheaper by buying consumer grade... This was all ~10 years ago, though, I think nowadays they just fleece everyone.
ksec 5y ago
While the revenue comes from Hardware, Driver is actually the centre of value. Just look at the history of Graphics Card ( even before the term GPU was born ), there are plenty of decent graphics hardware that fail to compete simply because of poor drivers. Of course this also means there is potential for a competitor to gain competitive advantage when they dont have to rely on GPU for revenue and profits generation. I expect or hope that to be Intel. ( That is ignoring GPU's potential patents issues )
- foxfluff 5y ago
  > While the revenue comes from Hardware, Driver is actually the centre of value. And IME it is the proprietary drivers that usually offer least value and most problems. That sways buying decisions.
  - renox 5y ago
    Then explain why everyone buys Nvidia cards for GPGPU?
    - zozbot234 5y ago
      Because GPGPU software stacks do a very poor job of supporting either of OpenCL or Vulkan Compute, which are the main free alternatives to CUDA. This is especially problematic in the ML space.
      - renox 5y ago
        Yes that was my point which contradicts what foxbluff wrote >> And IME it is the proprietary drivers that usually offer least value and most problems <<
        zozbot234 5y ago
        CUDA does not inherently offer "more value" than Vulkan Compute, though. It was simply developed earlier.
franga2000 5y ago
> Why is it that closed source drivers are the norm Closed source is the norm, no matter if it's a hardware company's driver/companion app or a service company's client app. It's rarely economical, but usually "makes business sense" as in there's one more proprietary thing that you own and that increases your apparent value to investors. Some reasons I've heard: - opening it would lower the barrier to entry for competitors (as if software is the big barrier) - it could be licensed to other companies in different industries (that almost never happens) - closed source is more secure and therefore less risky (a classic fallacy)
- oaiey 5y ago
  software is a gigantic barrier even when you put hardware next to it. maybe not for a highly sophisticated hardware like video cards, but generally, yes.
  - franga2000 5y ago
    Hardware: concept, iteration on paper, CAD, source parts for prototype, build prototype, write firmware, iterate prototype, CAD, source parts for product, find a manufacturer for custom parts, final assembly, certification, packaging, logistics, shipping. Software: hire 2 junior programmers, give them the hardware and protocol specs, wait 2 months, upload the executable to a website. The vast majority of "software for hardware" these days is just a GUI sending commands to the firmware over whatever communication channel is available. GPU drivers are pretty much the single example of very complex "software for hardware" in the mainstream market.

by csense 5y ago

zeusk 5y ago

Because of two reasons - driver can reveal internal workings of their “proprietary” hardware - they use driver features to further differentiate their hardware product But really it’s just old tradition and paranoia.

tlamponi 5y ago
> - driver can reveal internal workings of their “proprietary” hardware Every, somewhat solid, HW engineer from the competition will be able to still grasp those inner workings from a proprietary driver and the HW itself. In the end they cannot just copy (most) things over due to facing potential legal issues, no matter if the driver is foss or proprietary. > - they use driver features to further differentiate their hardware product > But really it’s just old tradition and paranoia Agreeing here, albeit AMD and Intel seem to have (somewhat) grasped that it doesn't need to be that way.

rock_hard 5y ago

It’s a mindset issue Sure, sometimes there is special sauce in the drivers too But mostly it’s just culture. Hardware companies also don’t like cloud software…because they think on prem is safer or whatever

est31 5y ago
Any company that is going to negotiate with a cloud company, or that is going to compete with a cloud company, should avoid using any services from that cloud company. Otherwise you risk giving them access to strategy papers, or even internal communication about strategies or negotiation limts. Cloud companies are some of the biggest customers of hardware companies like AMD. Eventually they will come to a point where they negotiate.
- jabl 5y ago
  That's a pretty serious accusation. The reputation of things like O365 and Google docs/mail would be shattered if it turned out that MS or Google would be reading internal documents or emails of other companies for anti-competitive purposes.
  - d110af5ccf 5y ago
    > That's a pretty serious accusation. It was not an accusation. A risk was articulated. The sheer quantity of hardware purchased by these companies is relevant when assessing risk/reward.

tyingq 5y ago

Patents you have licensed, but do not own. And so your lawyers advise you not to release any source code.

modeless 5y ago
And all the ones you didn't license too, because you don't want any patent trolls to find out you're using a technique vaguely similar to some patent you've never heard of. Aren't patents great?

sobkas 5y ago

> Why is it that closed source drivers are the norm rather than the exception for hardware companies? Because when you want to depreciate your old hardware and want to push your customers to new one, open source driver that is maintained, or even worse, add features that should be exclusive to your new hardware, you have a problem. Planned obsolescence is the name of the game in modern hardware industry. And even "open source" drivers like mwlwifi show similar pattern, good look fixing their ¢¢^√°^¢^° firmware.

sobkas 5y ago
Also when you depend on driver to differentiate between high/low end devices, open source driver is also no. Eg. Nvidia, throttling consumer devices in favour of enterprise grade ones.
- a2800276 5y ago
  Has this changed in recent years? Back in the days the consumer devices were faster but less reliable ( noone cares if two or three pixels are off in a 3d game). Cards based on the same hardware sold to industrial customers were just from better silicon bins run more conservatively. If you're running serious simulations you want accurate, reproducible results. Otoh, aerodynamic and seismic simulations can also be one or two "pixels off" and industry started to realize they can get faster equipment for cheaper by buying consumer grade... This was all ~10 years ago, though, I think nowadays they just fleece everyone.

ksec 5y ago

While the revenue comes from Hardware, Driver is actually the centre of value. Just look at the history of Graphics Card ( even before the term GPU was born ), there are plenty of decent graphics hardware that fail to compete simply because of poor drivers. Of course this also means there is potential for a competitor to gain competitive advantage when they dont have to rely on GPU for revenue and profits generation. I expect or hope that to be Intel. ( That is ignoring GPU's potential patents issues )

foxfluff 5y ago
> While the revenue comes from Hardware, Driver is actually the centre of value. And IME it is the proprietary drivers that usually offer least value and most problems. That sways buying decisions.
- renox 5y ago
  Then explain why everyone buys Nvidia cards for GPGPU?
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    Because GPGPU software stacks do a very poor job of supporting either of OpenCL or Vulkan Compute, which are the main free alternatives to CUDA. This is especially problematic in the ML space.
    - renox 5y ago
      Yes that was my point which contradicts what foxbluff wrote >> And IME it is the proprietary drivers that usually offer least value and most problems <<
      - zozbot234 5y ago
        CUDA does not inherently offer "more value" than Vulkan Compute, though. It was simply developed earlier.

franga2000 5y ago

> Why is it that closed source drivers are the norm Closed source is the norm, no matter if it's a hardware company's driver/companion app or a service company's client app. It's rarely economical, but usually "makes business sense" as in there's one more proprietary thing that you own and that increases your apparent value to investors. Some reasons I've heard: - opening it would lower the barrier to entry for competitors (as if software is the big barrier) - it could be licensed to other companies in different industries (that almost never happens) - closed source is more secure and therefore less risky (a classic fallacy)

oaiey 5y ago
software is a gigantic barrier even when you put hardware next to it. maybe not for a highly sophisticated hardware like video cards, but generally, yes.
- franga2000 5y ago
  Hardware: concept, iteration on paper, CAD, source parts for prototype, build prototype, write firmware, iterate prototype, CAD, source parts for product, find a manufacturer for custom parts, final assembly, certification, packaging, logistics, shipping. Software: hire 2 junior programmers, give them the hardware and protocol specs, wait 2 months, upload the executable to a website. The vast majority of "software for hardware" these days is just a GUI sending commands to the firmware over whatever communication channel is available. GPU drivers are pretty much the single example of very complex "software for hardware" in the mainstream market.