Free Silicon Foundation @fsi@mastodon.f-si.org
- Website
- https://f-si.org
- Conference
- https://wiki.f-si.org/index.php/FSiC2019
- Videos
- https://peertube.f-si.org
Admin
Joined Dec 2018
The next Free Silicon Conference will be held in Paris on July 7,8,9 2022 (COVID permitting) and we need your help to reach out to new people!
We want to bring together followers of the free/libre #silicon chip idea, people who love sharing experience, code and tools.
Is there any name/entity you would like to see or to meet? If so, please drop us a note.
If your idea is not listed yet on https://wiki.f-si.org/index.php/FSiC2019 you should definitely let us know!
We have submitted a proposal for a European call entitled "Coordination and Support Action (CSA) for Open Source Hardware for ultra-low-power, secure microprocessors":
Our proposal can be downloaded at:
https://wiki.f-si.org/index.php/Horizon_2021_Coordination_and_Support_Action_(CSA)_proposal
We feel that sufficiently new ideas have been generated for justifying the publication. This will further increase the #transparency of the selection process.
If you have any comments please leave them below.
The #Pegasus affair shows that complex systems have backdoors that can be turned against everyone by malicious interests. This could affect hardware too.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/20/pegasus-project-sparks-
clamour-for-investigations-into-use-of-nso-spyware
The general discussion should nevertheless not drift away from the question about the (il-)legitimacy of such companies/government
actions.
An article in German entitled "Consequences of the US boycott: China builds up its own EDA industry "
By-the-way, the problem with EDA access touches Europe as well, and Free and Open Source is an alternative too.
Next week, Thursday May 18, follow the online session on the future of European open hardware, hosted by the Next Generation Internet (NGI)
Forum:
https://nlnet.nl/news/2021/20210507-NGI-Zero-workshop-open-hardware.html
Streaming is via BigBlueButton and does not require registration.
"#AMD #processors from 2011 to 2019 vulnerable to two new attacks"
https://www.zdnet.com/article/amd-processors-from-2011-to-2019-vulnerable-to-two-new-attacks/
"With Collide+Probe, an attacker can monitor a victim’s memory accesses without knowledge of physical addresses or shared memory when time-sharing a logical core. With Load+Reload, we exploit the way predictor to obtain highly-accurate memory-access traces of victims on the same physical #core."
* According to research, the operation ran until at least 2018 ("Die Operation lief gemäss Recherchen bis mindestens 2018")
Quoting the Washington Post:
* "Crypto’s shift to **electronic** products [..]. Foreign governments clamored for systems that seemed clearly superior to the old clunky mechanical devices but in fact were **easier** for U.S. spies to read."
* "a **circuit-based** system could be made to appear that it was producing endless streams of randomly generated characters, while in reality it would repeat itself at short enough intervals for #NSA experts [..] to **crack** the pattern."
"The intelligence coup of the century"
For decades, the #CIA read the encrypted communications of allies and adversaries exploiting backdoors in silicon chips.
Free and open-source silicon will allow everybody to audit the full chip design, from netlists down to layout.
Keep up #Freedom with Free silicon!
The Free Silicon Foundation adopts a different funding model than #FOSDEM and promotes independence.
We think that certain sponsorships are problematic not only because of an evident conflict of interest (e.g. #GAFAM vs #freedom), but also because they induce some people and/or organizations like our not to attend #FOSDEM, therefore impacting, among others, the plurality of views on topics which can be as delicate as licences (https://2020.copyleftconf.org).
We did not suspect that Google is since 2013 not only **a** sponsor, but **the main** sponsor, of the Free Software Foundation Europe @fsfe :
https://fsfe.org/donate/thankgnus-2013.en.html . Thanks for the hint!
This is like if ExxonMobil was financing Greenpeace.
Just like for the SFC @conservancy above, we removed the #FSFE from the white paper.
We were not aware that @conservancy is financed by Google. Thanks for pointing this out!
The choice of including the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) in the paper was inspired by the role of Bradley M. Kuhn in the creation of the Affero GPL (https://sfconservancy.org/blog/?author=bkuhn).
Since an involvement of Google conflicts with our standards (as stated in our statute https://wiki.f-si.org/index.php/F-Si_Statute), we have removed the SFC from the white paper. Anyhow, they have not provided any feedback to it.
We prepared a white paper for the #EuropeanCommission containing recommendations about #OpenHardware as encouraged last November:
https://wiki.f-si.org/index.php/White_paper_for_the_EC,_January_2020
Please discuss it or endorse it by replying to this thread.
The paper will be delivered on January 31.
A first draft was shared in December with:
* april.org @aprilorg
* fsfe.org @fsfe
* fsf.org @fsf
* Aral Balkan @aral
* waag.org @waag
* sfconservancy.org @conservancy
* gpl-violations.org
* commonsnetwork.eu
What are the limitations of existing free and open-source (FOS) electronic design automation (#EDA) tools?
What is it missing to design a chip with 1+ Million gates?
Which will be the first foundry to open a process design kit (PDKs)?
These are some of the questions that will be addressed at the third Free Silicon Conference (#FSiC2020) which will be held in Zurich on June 4-6 2020.
More info at:
https://wiki.f-si.org/index.php/FSiC2020
Picture: the Raven chip of Tim Edwards
https://peertube.f-si.org/videos/watch/e8404429-4d32-4741-ac11-1beb0f16348e
#KiCad joins the Linux Foundation to advance electronic design automation
The European Commission is organizing a "Workshop about the future of Open Source Software and Open Source Hardware", Brussels, November 14-15 2019:
Online registration will close on November 6.
Is it possible to simulate transistors using open-source tools only?
How fast are the available solvers?
How hard is it to interface with existing PDKs?
The following talks provide very promising answers:
* ngspice - an open source mixed signal circuit simulator, by Holger Vogt
https://peertube.f-si.org/videos/watch/62e7ad36-e7fc-4884-971a-9fcedf17d9f2
* Gnu Circuit Analysis Package (GnuCap), by Al Davis
https://peertube.f-si.org/videos/watch/5cae10a1-c5c6-45d3-9ade-949c0d3a2062
* Converting 45nm transistor netlists to open standards, by Thomas Benz
https://peertube.f-si.org/videos/watch/40e29b80-8a91-445c-b3cc-1fb886d7d51b
Which foundries are the most friendly to open-source? Is there an open-source #PDK?
Kholdoun Torki of Circuits-Multi-Projects (https://mycmp.fr/) provided a great overview:
"Towards Foundry PDKs on Free CAD Tools"
https://peertube.f-si.org/videos/watch/db22ddc7-85cf-4356-bc46-af90e3f72fd6
All the recordings of the Free Silicon Conference are now online:
https://peertube.f-si.org/video-channels/fsic2019
Day 1 focuses on high-level design. Some of the concepts presented in the first talks can be partially applied to FPGAs as well
Day 2 discusses aspects closer to silicon, such as PDKs, memory generators and layouting
Day 3 presents hands-on tutorials
The full program is available at:
https://wiki.f-si.org/index.php/FSiC2019
The past Free Silicon Conference was opened with a great talk by Todd Weaver from #Purism:
"The Future of Computing and Why You Should Care"
https://peertube.f-si.org/videos/watch/d8dcaf9e-88c7-44cf-9f97-d7d96d1d9b28
- Website
- https://f-si.org
- Conference
- https://wiki.f-si.org/index.php/FSiC2019
- Videos
- https://peertube.f-si.org
Admin
Joined Dec 2018
