<story><title>LowRISC – An open-source, Linux-capable System-on-a-Chip</title><url>http://www.lowrisc.org/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lgeek</author><text>&amp;gt; we believe that the benefits of open source we enjoy in the software world can be applied to the hardware world&lt;p&gt;In my opinion open source hardware IP has at least two major limitations compared to software, which make it significantly less useful or important to end users. I guess your preference for open source rather than copyleft already hinted that the benefits are mostly for the ecosystem rather than the users. The first one is that even though you can modify the design, you have no practical way of using your modified design (at least in this context, because FPGAs are slow and expensive and high performance SoCs don&amp;#x27;t fit anyway).&lt;p&gt;The second limitation is that it is impractical to audit the hardware to determine whether you have actually received the unmodified open source design. For software this can be achieved using reproducible builds or just by compiling it for yourself.&lt;p&gt;Open source hardware boards (as opposed to IP) have some of these limitations as well, however both can be overcome by a hobbyist with a modest budget.</text></item><item><author>asb</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m one of the founders of lowRISC, a not-for-profit effort to produce a completely open source, Linux capable, multi-core SoC. Fundamentally, we believe that the benefits of open source we enjoy in the software world can be applied to the hardware world will have a huge positive effect on the hardware industry, academia, and wider society. Much like with Raspberry Pi, our approach is to lead by _doing_ which is why we&amp;#x27;re working to create our own SoC platform and low-cost development boards.&lt;p&gt;I should point out the title has been editorialised slightly inaccurately. Rob Mullins is a fellow co-founder of lowRISC and was also a Raspberry Pi founder, and I took a leading role in Raspberry Pi software work for a number of years, but it&amp;#x27;s not really accurate to say lowRISC is backed by &amp;quot;the makers of Raspberry Pi&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;If you have any questions, I&amp;#x27;ll do my best to answer (I&amp;#x27;m on a short holiday right now, so have slightly intermittent internet access).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>asb</author><text>I agree, open source hardware (and especially open source silicon, where there are such huge barriers of entry) is very much different to open source software. It&amp;#x27;s possible that a breakthrough in direct-write lithography or similar would help to reduce these barriers, but it&amp;#x27;s not something we&amp;#x27;re betting the project on. This is one reason why our hope isn&amp;#x27;t to produce just one iteration of the lowRISC SoC, but to have a regular tapeout schedule. This means if you make a contribution, you know you&amp;#x27;ll be able to see it on shipping silicon on a reasonable timeline. Another part of this story is, as with minion cores, in moving more aspects of the design from fixed hardware to being software configurable.&lt;p&gt;As to your second point, I agree - open source hardware is no silver bullet for unearthing malicious backdoors. Being able to audit for unintentional issues is useful, but yes - you need to secure or trust your supply chain to know that the chip you have in your hands matches the open RTL.</text></comment>
<story><title>LowRISC – An open-source, Linux-capable System-on-a-Chip</title><url>http://www.lowrisc.org/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lgeek</author><text>&amp;gt; we believe that the benefits of open source we enjoy in the software world can be applied to the hardware world&lt;p&gt;In my opinion open source hardware IP has at least two major limitations compared to software, which make it significantly less useful or important to end users. I guess your preference for open source rather than copyleft already hinted that the benefits are mostly for the ecosystem rather than the users. The first one is that even though you can modify the design, you have no practical way of using your modified design (at least in this context, because FPGAs are slow and expensive and high performance SoCs don&amp;#x27;t fit anyway).&lt;p&gt;The second limitation is that it is impractical to audit the hardware to determine whether you have actually received the unmodified open source design. For software this can be achieved using reproducible builds or just by compiling it for yourself.&lt;p&gt;Open source hardware boards (as opposed to IP) have some of these limitations as well, however both can be overcome by a hobbyist with a modest budget.</text></item><item><author>asb</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m one of the founders of lowRISC, a not-for-profit effort to produce a completely open source, Linux capable, multi-core SoC. Fundamentally, we believe that the benefits of open source we enjoy in the software world can be applied to the hardware world will have a huge positive effect on the hardware industry, academia, and wider society. Much like with Raspberry Pi, our approach is to lead by _doing_ which is why we&amp;#x27;re working to create our own SoC platform and low-cost development boards.&lt;p&gt;I should point out the title has been editorialised slightly inaccurately. Rob Mullins is a fellow co-founder of lowRISC and was also a Raspberry Pi founder, and I took a leading role in Raspberry Pi software work for a number of years, but it&amp;#x27;s not really accurate to say lowRISC is backed by &amp;quot;the makers of Raspberry Pi&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;If you have any questions, I&amp;#x27;ll do my best to answer (I&amp;#x27;m on a short holiday right now, so have slightly intermittent internet access).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cryptarch</author><text>&amp;gt; The second limitation is that it is impractical to audit the hardware to determine whether you have actually received the unmodified open source design. For software this can be achieved using reproducible builds or just by compiling it for yourself.&lt;p&gt;Mostly too expensive AFAIK. I&amp;#x27;m fuzzy on the details, but it should be possible to create high-resolution (e.g. X-ray) scans of the chips (as is done by chip design pirates) and compare them to known-good implementations, or images generated based off the chip&amp;#x27;s open-source design.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m looking forward to a future where PC auditing shops are a thing. Take in your machine, and let them verify the contents of every chip and storage unit on your device.</text></comment>