4 ms·

"arm secure" ... why can't the hardware designer do something simple and clean: remove this arm stuff, don't forget to allow ppl to remove physicaly and easily

"arm secure" ... why can't the hardware designer do something simple and clean: remove this arm stuff, don't forget to allow ppl to remove physicaly and easily the bluetooth and wifi modules. And now, time to write some assembly (without abusing the assembler preprocessor...), coze compilers (aka backdoor injectors, or absurd and grotesque bloats) should become, finally, useless (well some hardware vendor drivers will be provided as gcc/linux C dialect...)

uhhhhuhyes 4y ago
always interesting how i've lived 30 years of life, 10 of which as a reasonably successful backend server/"business logic" developer, and the above comment still sounds like alien language to me :)
- pca006132 4y ago
  He probably wants to use assembly to write everything? No idea either.
  - sylware 4y ago
    If risc-v is successful, no need of those backdoor injectors which are compilers anymore (and absurd and grotesque bloats). Just write risc-v assembly without abusing the macro preprocessor.
    - imtringued 4y ago
      Why would that be easier than just forking GCC and checking for backdoors?
      - RF_Savage 4y ago
        And then we get to the fun of trusting trust. https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_ReflectionsonTrustingTrust.pdf https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_Ref...
        pca006132 4y ago
        You can bootstrap it with a very simple implementation of a C compiler written in assembly, if you really want to.
        sylware 4y ago
        A decade ago, some geniuses at the gcc steering committee decided to switch gcc from a simple C dialect to c++. Now you need at least a c++98 compiler to compile gcc (then linux). It is probably one of the biggest mistakes done in the open software, ever. Why, well we all know the abysmal gap in complexity between simple C and c++.
      - sylware 4y ago
        If you don't understand why it is a good thing to generate machine code with an assembler of a few thousands of lines (simple C or even assembly, see fasmg) instead of an absurdely and grotesquely massive (several millions of lines of c++-written code) compiler completely impossible to audit and which generated machine code has to be checked each time it changes... cannot do much about it, sorry.
ElectricalUnion 4y ago
> why can't the hardware designer do something simple and clean If it was easy, it would not need firmware in the first place. Firmware is there because people expect certain features and quality of life. See softmodems. > write some assembly (without abusing the assembler preprocessor...) You want https://terralang.org/ https://terralang.org/ and not "just C"/"just Assembler" instead ?
- trasz 4y ago
  Firmware often decreases the quality of life. See Intel remote management/backdoor mechanism for example.
  - pca006132 4y ago
    They can probably implement something similar directly in the silicon. It doesn't have to be software.
    - sylware 4y ago
      Ofc, it could be indeed 100% silicon... but for very complex hardware like GPUs, better to have some jingle software room in order to be able to fix "complexity bugs".
    - trasz 4y ago
      Implement the entire TCP/IP stack in silicon, as a backdoor? Nah.
  - ElectricalUnion 4y ago
    > Firmware often decreases the quality of life. See Intel remote management/backdoor mechanism for example. IME is a bad example here. That's an entire upgradeable MINIX OS embedded in your system - if it was really firmware, Intel would not be able to update it, or you be able to neuter it.
- sylware 4y ago
  It depends on the context: GPUs are probably the most complex chips out there, and if you want to them to be ready to render at power on, they probably need firmware (which you would be able to update to fix "bugs") or we end up like what we have now, namely massive drivers locked-in with the gcc C kernel dialect, only there to expose a few 2^n bytes ring buffers (3D/dma/compute/irq/video_encode/video_decode) with their hardware doorbells. if risc-v is a success we don't need anything except a risc-v assembler: then the main pitfall would be the abuse of the macro preprocessor.

uhhhhuhyes 4y ago

always interesting how i've lived 30 years of life, 10 of which as a reasonably successful backend server/"business logic" developer, and the above comment still sounds like alien language to me :)

pca006132 4y ago
He probably wants to use assembly to write everything? No idea either.
- sylware 4y ago
  If risc-v is successful, no need of those backdoor injectors which are compilers anymore (and absurd and grotesque bloats). Just write risc-v assembly without abusing the macro preprocessor.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    Why would that be easier than just forking GCC and checking for backdoors?
    - RF_Savage 4y ago
      And then we get to the fun of trusting trust. https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_ReflectionsonTrustingTrust.pdf https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_Ref...
      - pca006132 4y ago
        You can bootstrap it with a very simple implementation of a C compiler written in assembly, if you really want to.
        sylware 4y ago
        A decade ago, some geniuses at the gcc steering committee decided to switch gcc from a simple C dialect to c++. Now you need at least a c++98 compiler to compile gcc (then linux). It is probably one of the biggest mistakes done in the open software, ever. Why, well we all know the abysmal gap in complexity between simple C and c++.
    - sylware 4y ago
      If you don't understand why it is a good thing to generate machine code with an assembler of a few thousands of lines (simple C or even assembly, see fasmg) instead of an absurdely and grotesquely massive (several millions of lines of c++-written code) compiler completely impossible to audit and which generated machine code has to be checked each time it changes... cannot do much about it, sorry.

ElectricalUnion 4y ago

> why can't the hardware designer do something simple and clean If it was easy, it would not need firmware in the first place. Firmware is there because people expect certain features and quality of life. See softmodems. > write some assembly (without abusing the assembler preprocessor...) You want https://terralang.org/ https://terralang.org/ and not "just C"/"just Assembler" instead ?

trasz 4y ago
Firmware often decreases the quality of life. See Intel remote management/backdoor mechanism for example.
- pca006132 4y ago
  They can probably implement something similar directly in the silicon. It doesn't have to be software.
  - sylware 4y ago
    Ofc, it could be indeed 100% silicon... but for very complex hardware like GPUs, better to have some jingle software room in order to be able to fix "complexity bugs".
  - trasz 4y ago
    Implement the entire TCP/IP stack in silicon, as a backdoor? Nah.
- ElectricalUnion 4y ago
  > Firmware often decreases the quality of life. See Intel remote management/backdoor mechanism for example. IME is a bad example here. That's an entire upgradeable MINIX OS embedded in your system - if it was really firmware, Intel would not be able to update it, or you be able to neuter it.
sylware 4y ago
It depends on the context: GPUs are probably the most complex chips out there, and if you want to them to be ready to render at power on, they probably need firmware (which you would be able to update to fix "bugs") or we end up like what we have now, namely massive drivers locked-in with the gcc C kernel dialect, only there to expose a few 2^n bytes ring buffers (3D/dma/compute/irq/video_encode/video_decode) with their hardware doorbells. if risc-v is a success we don't need anything except a risc-v assembler: then the main pitfall would be the abuse of the macro preprocessor.