AMD announced its equivalent of Lagrange yesterday as its part of the Trusted Computing Group’s efforts to bring hardware-based DRM to PCs.
Oh, of course, that’s not what AMD wants you to figure out. From XBit Labs’ account, it must have been a pretty bizarre encounter with AMD; essentially they said, “We’re coming out with this security thing called Presidio; don’t ask us anything about it.”
Rest assured, though, this almost certainly will be the functional equivalent of LaGrange. As you can see from the Trusted Computing Group’s membership list, AMD is one of the head honchos of the group, so they have to deliver on their end. If Presidio really had absolutely nothing to do with this, they would have said “No,” when asked, not “No comment.”
Call it LaGrange, call it Presidio, this is the silicon part of the geek industry’s contingency plan when/if legislators dealing with digital theft wise up and demand a technological solution to the problem.
Whether it’s Intel, AMD, IBM, Microsoft, or anybody else, anybody talking about this will talk as little as possible about its DRM capabilities and instead talk a whole lot about security. Just like P2Pers talk about all the legitimate uses of P2Ping. Somehow I find rather amusing justice in this. 🙂
No doubt some will peruse the list and note a lack of penguin-lovers (well, the biggest REAL penguin of all, IBM, is on top of the list, too.) No doubt this will fuel fantasies about Linux becoming the Rebel Alliance against DRM, or something like that.
I can’t stop mental masturbation, but rest assured when and if the time comes that any mainstream Linux distribution will have to have to put in pretty much the same thing, and make it tamper-proof. There’s no way MS is going to put on any legislatively-mandated DRM chains and let the penguin roam free.
It may take a few years, probably will, but we’re going to eventually end up with this, and it’s not going to be a trifling speed bump remedied by a readily available and easily obtainable crack.
Be the first to comment