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How AMD plans to take over the market by adding DRM directly to CPU

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Lashiec:
Well, maybe I'm going to get all wrong, but I think the author is not that tech savvy by not being aware of the latest developments on computer technology, not to mention you guys have misread the article.

Probably the AMD guy said the new GPUs (Radeon 2xxx) would have HDCP included in all models, unlike the Radeon 1xxx, which only had these kind of annoyances in certain models (like the one I bought the other day). So this are old news. As you may know, for a PC to be able to play HD contents (HD DVD and Blu-Ray) in its full glory you need "compatible" hardware. That is, a monitor with HDCP output, a graphic card with HDCP input, a compatible SO (right now, only Vista can, but I'm sure Leopard will, and Mr. Torvalds has this discussion with the GNU guys about how the GPLv3 ruled out DRM, the people over at the FSF finally changed the new license terms to make Linus happy), and a "approved" player (no VideoLAN or commie software like that LOL). If any fails, you'll get a worse movie, in terms of video and audio quality of course), or no movie at all (not sure about the latter, though). Before you think: "we'll buy NVIDIA", consider that GeForce cards have the same thing. Oh, and this'll probably extends to the Torrenza technology as well.

If I'm really wrong, and you're right, some questions arise. First, is truly possible for a technical point of view to put this kind of protection inside the CPU? I mean, HD playback is currently very taxing for the computer, even with high-end GPUs, due to the real time decryption of the contents the CPU has to make, and encryption is what it made of HDCP the ultimate hack ('til the good reverse engineers came around ;)). Are they going to put an extra step in the core for ultimate protection? How are they going to achieve this? Embedding a list of certificates with the approved companies? Are you going to get a "Please input your password" next time you say "Hey, Scarlett Johansson looks pretty here, I'm going to make a capture"?

Second, is people really going to tolerate these abuses? Remember what happened when Intel wanted to put an unique ID inside every Pentium III to help people with online shopping and bad guys with online tracking? And how the public backslash made Intel put the ID as "Off" by default? I'm sure that if AMD does this, people will get upset again. Unlike HD opticals, with a technical specification made almost in secret by the various companies developing them, who in turn have a good reason for the DRM as a few are also involved with content creation, AMD doesn't have this conflict of interests, and they surely have to make everything public. And for the illiterate computer users part, I know people want to play their legally acquired media in their computers without using the physical disc, and if the computer denies the possibility, they surely hit the P2P world or the streets in mass to correct this bug. Besides, this is not a good move for AMD future, as f0dder said Core 2 Duo was a big hit for them, and being mean is not the best way to make GOOD friends...

AND third, and most important... uhm, well, there's no third. My excuses for the long post.

f0dder:
The technology that goes in the CPU (or at least chipset) could be public-key crypto verification of the BIOS/EFI code, which is basically the first layer of software that receives control when you power on your box. Okay, so now BIOS/EFI is basically unhackable, and BIOS/EFI would then proceed to only accept a crypto signed OS kernel and drivers.

Basically any OS these days have a notion of "kernel" and "user" mode - user mode can't touch kernel mode stuff (at least when no flaws are exploited). Kernel mode requires drivers, and those has to be signed. On top of that, add a HyperVisor that controls kernel mode, and is CPU enforced and pretty hard to break out of (meant to be impossible, but might still be possible to come up with some clever tricks).

The difficulty of getting your drivers signed when you're a small-time developer can make things like daemon-tools, installable EXT3 filesystem drivers etc. pretty hard to come by in the future - and of course anything "malicious" in the eyes of Big CorpTM of course won't stand a chance of being signed.

Lashiec:
Well, it seems that Intel beat AMD in this regard. Read the news, especially the second page, which explains everything in detail. So, ready to wear the tinfoil hat? ;D

EDIT: The second page also mentions the good part about Intel technology, a security sandbox, quite interesting. Of course, the balance between your security and the security of earning dollars on part of content providers is hard to achieve. As always, everything useful created by humankind has this double-edged character.

f0dder:
Lashiec: double-edged sword indeed. I hate DRM with a passion, but Intel's VT stuff has really great uses as well...

PaladinMJ:
the whole big brother, tell me what i can do with something I own drives me insane. If I bought the thing how i use it is MY concern no one else's. if I want to rip a DVD to HD to watch on the go or WHATEVER its my right. FAIR USE! If the fair Use lobby had the monetary impact these DRM groups did we would be ok.

I'm ranting and making no sense I better just SHUT UP. ***SIGH***

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