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A comment on Broadcom releases an open-source driver for its wireless chipsets. Parent comment

Re:Broadcom releases an open-source driver for its wireless ... by dfox on Thursday September 09, 2010 @05:14PM (#1676959)
The business problem of open source 3D drivers lies not so much in secret know-how in the drivers but in this: http://steveblank.com/2009/04/16/supermac-war-story-7-buildi... High-end graphics cards tend to be exactly same as consumer level cards, save for few bits in some configuration memory that is used by driver to disable more advanced features/reduce performance.
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Re:Broadcom releases an open-source driver for its wireless ... by cdavid on Thursday September 09, 2010 @06:59PM (#1677258)
Is this relevant to the current 3d cards market ? I somehow doubt it.
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Re:Broadcom releases an open-source driver for its wireless ... by forgottenpaswrd on Friday September 10, 2010 @04:10AM (#1678232)
It is. Making a new chip is very very expensive, but copying it is cheap. People demand millions of low end systems but only thousands of high end.

What companies do is use mass production for lowering the price not only of their low-end chips but high end too. They just disable and don't test the "advanced features" in low end cards.

With drivers you could enable it. Some blocks could be damaged(as it was not tested) but as a much lower price you just can buy new cheap ones.

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Re:Broadcom releases an open-source driver for its wireless ... by wmf on Thursday September 09, 2010 @07:39PM (#1677352)
It is relevant; people are "softmodding" GeForces into Quadros, theoretically costing Nvidia millions in revenue. Open-source drivers might make this even easier.
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Re:Broadcom releases an open-source driver for its wireless ... by ciupicri on Thursday September 09, 2010 @08:23PM (#1677449)
Do you have more details about this? Maybe a link or something.
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Re:Broadcom releases an open-source driver for its wireless ... by wmf on Friday September 10, 2010 @11:49AM (#1679201)
http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=geforce+softmodding
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Re:Broadcom releases an open-source driver for its wireless ... by sliverstorm on Thursday September 09, 2010 @07:28PM (#1677322)
They typically laser-cut traces etc nowadays.
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