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Member since:
2010-01-21
I suppose it means you can't fix Broadcom's bugs for them, and you can't repurpose the GPU for other computing tasks (OpenCL?), but those seem more like quibbles than real obstacles, to me.
The argument is that, if a firmware is so complex that there's a GLSL compiler in it, then it's a co-processor with a closed-source OS of its own, not mere firmware on a subordinate processor.
Heck, on the Pi, the GPU is responsible for loading the image off the SD card and setting up initial state before handing off to the CPU so, if you're of the tinfoil hat persuasion, you could plausibly rant about the possibility of backdoors and the risk of techniques similar to Ken Thompson's hypothetical compromised C compiler.
http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html
Edited 2012-11-24 13:11 UTC