Re: Re: "Drivers? We don't need no stinking..."

>> Chip vendors don't need to betray any IP in register-level docs; the IP is 
>> inside the circuitry inside the chip, and chip vendors routinely betray 
>> more about that in glossy promotional materials than they ever could in
>> register docs.
> 
> Did you ever really see hardware doc ? There is much more info there
> than is generally available elsewhere and give a fair idea of how things
> are done, more maybe to another hardware developper than to us software
> people, but still.

Well, alright, maybe not more than they ever *could*....

Yes, I've seen books under NDA, books not under NDA, and PDF files that I've
downloaded from vendor sites.

But it depends on exactly what you mean by "info".

The promotional materials describe the chip innards in general functional
terms, a general block layout that shows how the chip implements the claimed
features.  This provides a clear tip-off to any chip engineer what the chip
is up to.  The vendors actually show this stuff off to each other at chip
conferences, usually with papers that go into more detail.

The register-level specifications tell you what a driver needs to put in the
registers to operate the features.

Some register-level docs also go into some general operational theory, to
help explain the register usage; and some replicate a data sheet with
electrical characteristics of the integrated circuit for board designers.

I assume you mean general operational theory, as the bit-flipping stuff turns
up in the driver source anyway, so that couldn't possibly be an issue.  But
there doesn't NEED to be anything in the theory of operation that betrays
anything the vendors haven't already bragged about to each other.  If there
is, there doesn't need to be.

That was my point on that one.


-- Jim Howard  <[email protected]>

 
> Friendly,
> 
> Sven Luther