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A comment on Could EU force hardware manufacturers to make working drivers for Linux?. Parent comment

Re:Could EU force hardware manufacturers to make working dri... by pasabagi on Monday October 02, 2023 @01:03AM (#37734193)
It's a cool idea, but where do you draw the line? Where do you place something like microcode? Depending on how you design a computer, you can have software almost all the way down.
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Re:Could EU force hardware manufacturers to make working dri... by loup-vaillant on Wednesday October 04, 2023 @04:44AM (#37762537)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37731829

I draw the line at "can it be updated without returning to the factory?"

If microcode can be updated by the user (or remotely by Intel), it’s software. If it’s immutable then its hardware. If an FPGA bitstream (say a RISC-V soft core) is locked into the FPGA’s NVCM, then it can no longer be modified, and it counts as hardware. If however it is merely stored in the SPI flash and can be modified, then it’s software.

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