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But that is a insane endavour. Like, new hardware appears every day, to reverse engineer all of it, thats the ultimate futile endavour i can think of. Why not g

But that is a insane endavour. Like, new hardware appears every day, to reverse engineer all of it, thats the ultimate futile endavour i can think of. Why not get a more usefull stone if one wants to be sisyphos?

photochemsyn 3y ago
I'm sure people said in the 1980s that open-source free compilers and open-source free operating systems were also an insane endeavor. A little research turns up this claim: > "In 1987, the Borland Turbo C compiler for MS-DOS was priced at $99, while the Microsoft C compiler for MS-DOS was priced at $495. On the other hand, the Sun Microsystems SPARCstation C compiler for the SPARC platform was priced at $7,500." I also think this is an area where OpenAI / GPT code generation will have a huge impact. It should be possible, given open-source hardware specs, to build the appropriate drivers for any operating system (i.e. Linux) quite quickly with the assistance of these new tools.
- qikInNdOutReply 3y ago
  Are you aware how lowlevel hardware often works? Its basically .. write value 0xDEADBEEF to adress 0x00A0. Wait three cycles, while the underlying hardware performs some steps, to switch into a different mode, then continue with operations in said mode. This seems something that is very unintuitive, even with the given documentation (which one often does not get). Often enough, all that is available is the assembly itself (thus reverse engineer). So how does chat gpt do with just the assembly? Can it write documentation on a given hardware plattform, just given the assembly?
pabs3 3y ago
Many of the Linux drivers we have today are reverse engineered. At minimum the entirety of the Apple M1 support, all of the ARM GPU drivers, the nouveau driver. Open source firmware is much less common and firmware reverse engineering even more rare though. https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware/Open https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware/Open

photochemsyn 3y ago

I'm sure people said in the 1980s that open-source free compilers and open-source free operating systems were also an insane endeavor. A little research turns up this claim: > "In 1987, the Borland Turbo C compiler for MS-DOS was priced at $99, while the Microsoft C compiler for MS-DOS was priced at $495. On the other hand, the Sun Microsystems SPARCstation C compiler for the SPARC platform was priced at $7,500." I also think this is an area where OpenAI / GPT code generation will have a huge impact. It should be possible, given open-source hardware specs, to build the appropriate drivers for any operating system (i.e. Linux) quite quickly with the assistance of these new tools.

qikInNdOutReply 3y ago
Are you aware how lowlevel hardware often works? Its basically .. write value 0xDEADBEEF to adress 0x00A0. Wait three cycles, while the underlying hardware performs some steps, to switch into a different mode, then continue with operations in said mode. This seems something that is very unintuitive, even with the given documentation (which one often does not get). Often enough, all that is available is the assembly itself (thus reverse engineer). So how does chat gpt do with just the assembly? Can it write documentation on a given hardware plattform, just given the assembly?

pabs3 3y ago

Many of the Linux drivers we have today are reverse engineered. At minimum the entirety of the Apple M1 support, all of the ARM GPU drivers, the nouveau driver. Open source firmware is much less common and firmware reverse engineering even more rare though. https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware/Open https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware/Open