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Capt'n Corrupt's Avatar
Posts: 3,524 | Thanked: 2,958 times | Joined on Oct 2007 @ Delta Quadrant
#3659
Originally Posted by danramos View Post
Well, in this case, the one BIG advantage is that ASUS has created for themselves at least a small a legacy of releasing 100% open-source compatible netbooks in the past and promoting that as a benefit--so they probably "get it" more than Nokia (who has promoted it, but has yet to release ANYTHING 100% open-source... they didn't even have the patience to wait for 100% MeeGo).
Is the Geforce ULP drivers source available for compilation? If not, even Asus would have the obstacle of releasing Tegra 2 drivers that would be the IP of NVidia.

Having an unlocked bootloader is very important, though supplying software access to the hardware is another matter altogether.

This is where something like LLVM would come in tremendously handy. Instead of only compiling drivers for a target platform, target LLVM bitcode, and then give developers the option of translating the bitcode to native code on their platform. Since bitcode is ISA-independent, the underlying hardware would be of secondary concern. Also the driver IP is still protected! The driver manufacturer could still optimize the drivers for specific platforms to keep their OEMs happy.

In this scheme the LLVM bitcode would likely result in performance loss (no assembler), but at least you would provide support for a of unforeseen platforms, and legacy support into the future. Who knows, runtime profiling using an interpreter on the bitcode may suggest optimization on the native compile for enhanced performance.
 

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