5 ms·

J-core Open Processor

177 points by CarolineW 10y ago

CarolineW 10y ago
In the interests of full disclosure, this was submitted earlier here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12103471 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12103471 However, that submission was incorrectly marked as a duplicate of this submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12101908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12101908 (video) But it's not a duplicate - they have different information. This submission is the web site of the project and has links to files and "how to" documentation. The second submission is to an hour-long about the project, and while it contains information, it's fundamentally different. I don't know why the original submission of this link got marked as a duplicate - I believe it to have been a mistake.
- sctb 10y ago
  We've unmarked the previous thread as a dupe.
  - CarolineW 10y ago
    While I appreciate the action, it's too late. That item has sunk now without trace, and while karma isn't actually worth anything, it would have been nice for that original submitter to get the associated karma for finding this, and not me.
npx 10y ago
Tremendous work as always from Rich Felker, Rob Landley, & co.
nxzero 10y ago
>> " Open source hardware can be manufactured cheaply (about 3 cents per processor) audited for NSA backdoors or vendor backdoors or decade-old exploitable firmware bugs, and built without hidden extra processors in things like storage devices and USB controllers easily repurposed into spyware." Anyone familiar with J-Core able to expand on the how an audit would be done end-to-end? Seems like it would be much harder to do in practice than in theory.
- stephen_g 10y ago
  You can audit the code, compile, synthesise, place and route the design, tape out masks, send it to a fab, decap a few of the chips you get back and look at it under a microscope. You should be able to compare that to the masks to verify the design hasn't been tampered with. It's harder to audit ASICs that other people have had fabricated without having the exact same standard cell libraries, tooling versions (optimisations change over time), knowing what optimisation settings they used, etc. to be able to prove the masks came from the same code.
  - brianwawok 10y ago
    Is spot checking good enough? Wouldnt you need to follow every trace?
    - olympus 10y ago
      In hardware, implementing a backdoor that provides a reasonable level of functionality is probably going to cause a visible change to the layout/routing, kind of like a software backdoor is going to change the hash. I say probably because it's possible that advanced actors like the USA and China have developed tools that add features (backdoors) while making the visual layout look very similar. Then you would probably only find the backdoors by "fuzzing" the chip like you would a piece of software.
      - ashitlerferad 10y ago
        There are hardware backdoors that require only dopant-level changes, see the second comment here: https://lwn.net/Articles/688751/ https://lwn.net/Articles/688751/
        digi_owl 10y ago
        It feels like trying to fend of anything but automated drive-by attacks online will be a fools errand.
      - 10y ago
raverbashing 10y ago
Interesting that's still and nommu system. Maybe as soon as the patents expire we can get the mmu system. "Numato provides a GPL-licensed python3 tool to flash bitstreams onto their board. [TODO: port to python 2]" No, please. Don't even bother
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  What patents? All kinds of CPU's have MMU's. Implementations go back decades. Cant imagine a patent risk for MMU's.
  - raverbashing 10y ago
    Patents for SH4 as described in the article (this is an SH2)
lisper 10y ago
This is really getting annoying. I submitted this same link 14 hours earlier (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12103471 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12103471). It was flagged as a dupe (even thought it wasn't at the time) and killed. (It has since been unflagged, but of course it's too late to save it now.)
- CarolineW 10y ago
  I agree with you entirely, which is why I resubmitted it and made the extensive comment[0] about why it is not a duplicate, and deserves to be here in its own right. If I could gift you the karma I would, not that it's really worth much, to be honest. The current method of handling duplicates is quite simply not working. Consider the multiple large discussions about Google deleting a blog without warning[1][2][3]. HN needs a way to merge items, not simply mark some as duplicates, which kills the item, and any discussion on it then sinks without trace. There must be a better way. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12105922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12105922 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12097063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12097063 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12099757 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12099757 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12100843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12100843
  - lisper 10y ago
    Ah, I missed that. Thanks for the shout out! I've given some thought to how a more fair submission system would work, and I came up with the following idea: 1. Dup submissions are treated as upvotes 2. If an article has N upvotes, the original submitter gets N points (as it is now), the second submitter (or upvoter -- same thing) gets N/2 points, the third gets N/3 points, etc. until either the article makes it onto the front page or some arbitrary point threshold (like 10) is reached. 3. Every upvote or submission costs one karma point. So you have to have at least one karma point to submit or upvote. You have to get your bootstrap points by submitting a comment that gets an upvote. This is to prevent spamming.
analognoise 10y ago
I'm interested, but mostly in the part where we get to silicon - implementing yet another CPU in VHDL isn't all that uncommon. What about the "to silicon" part of this equation is out there now?
- tlrobinson 10y ago
  In this talk https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12101908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12101908 they said their toolchain can output layouts for the CPU on silicon, and it would cost about $25,000 to have photomasks made, and I think about $0.50 per chip.
  - analognoise 10y ago
    I haven't seen that part of their toolchain; that's where I'm interested. Also, seeing a successful test of this toolchain in working silicon, with a known vendor and a good process, would be extremely helpful for the community (if other people are going to get aboard, which I hope they are).
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      Look up Qflow open-source flow. It's the likely toolchain OSS projects will use. Combines Yosys front-end, ABC backend, and custom tool (Qrouter) for routing. Worth evaluating.
      - analognoise 10y ago
        Yosys is a Verilog front-end; this is being designed in VHDL. It looks like there is a translator, but I'm unsure about its license, source availability, and capability.

177 points by CarolineW 10y ago

In the interests of full disclosure, this was submitted earlier here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12103471 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12103471 However, that submission was incorrectly marked as a duplicate of this submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12101908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12101908 (video) But it's not a duplicate - they have different information. This submission is the web site of the project and has links to files and "how to" documentation. The second submission is to an hour-long about the project, and while it contains information, it's fundamentally different. I don't know why the original submission of this link got marked as a duplicate - I believe it to have been a mistake.

sctb 10y ago
We've unmarked the previous thread as a dupe.
- CarolineW 10y ago
  While I appreciate the action, it's too late. That item has sunk now without trace, and while karma isn't actually worth anything, it would have been nice for that original submitter to get the associated karma for finding this, and not me.

npx 10y ago

Tremendous work as always from Rich Felker, Rob Landley, & co.

nxzero 10y ago

>> " Open source hardware can be manufactured cheaply (about 3 cents per processor) audited for NSA backdoors or vendor backdoors or decade-old exploitable firmware bugs, and built without hidden extra processors in things like storage devices and USB controllers easily repurposed into spyware." Anyone familiar with J-Core able to expand on the how an audit would be done end-to-end? Seems like it would be much harder to do in practice than in theory.

stephen_g 10y ago
You can audit the code, compile, synthesise, place and route the design, tape out masks, send it to a fab, decap a few of the chips you get back and look at it under a microscope. You should be able to compare that to the masks to verify the design hasn't been tampered with. It's harder to audit ASICs that other people have had fabricated without having the exact same standard cell libraries, tooling versions (optimisations change over time), knowing what optimisation settings they used, etc. to be able to prove the masks came from the same code.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  Is spot checking good enough? Wouldnt you need to follow every trace?
  - olympus 10y ago
    In hardware, implementing a backdoor that provides a reasonable level of functionality is probably going to cause a visible change to the layout/routing, kind of like a software backdoor is going to change the hash. I say probably because it's possible that advanced actors like the USA and China have developed tools that add features (backdoors) while making the visual layout look very similar. Then you would probably only find the backdoors by "fuzzing" the chip like you would a piece of software.
    - ashitlerferad 10y ago
      There are hardware backdoors that require only dopant-level changes, see the second comment here: https://lwn.net/Articles/688751/ https://lwn.net/Articles/688751/
      - digi_owl 10y ago
        It feels like trying to fend of anything but automated drive-by attacks online will be a fools errand.
    - 10y ago

raverbashing 10y ago

Interesting that's still and nommu system. Maybe as soon as the patents expire we can get the mmu system. "Numato provides a GPL-licensed python3 tool to flash bitstreams onto their board. [TODO: port to python 2]" No, please. Don't even bother

nickpsecurity 10y ago
What patents? All kinds of CPU's have MMU's. Implementations go back decades. Cant imagine a patent risk for MMU's.
- raverbashing 10y ago
  Patents for SH4 as described in the article (this is an SH2)

lisper 10y ago

This is really getting annoying. I submitted this same link 14 hours earlier (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12103471 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12103471). It was flagged as a dupe (even thought it wasn't at the time) and killed. (It has since been unflagged, but of course it's too late to save it now.)

CarolineW 10y ago
I agree with you entirely, which is why I resubmitted it and made the extensive comment[0] about why it is not a duplicate, and deserves to be here in its own right. If I could gift you the karma I would, not that it's really worth much, to be honest. The current method of handling duplicates is quite simply not working. Consider the multiple large discussions about Google deleting a blog without warning[1][2][3]. HN needs a way to merge items, not simply mark some as duplicates, which kills the item, and any discussion on it then sinks without trace. There must be a better way. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12105922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12105922 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12097063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12097063 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12099757 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12099757 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12100843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12100843
- lisper 10y ago
  Ah, I missed that. Thanks for the shout out! I've given some thought to how a more fair submission system would work, and I came up with the following idea: 1. Dup submissions are treated as upvotes 2. If an article has N upvotes, the original submitter gets N points (as it is now), the second submitter (or upvoter -- same thing) gets N/2 points, the third gets N/3 points, etc. until either the article makes it onto the front page or some arbitrary point threshold (like 10) is reached. 3. Every upvote or submission costs one karma point. So you have to have at least one karma point to submit or upvote. You have to get your bootstrap points by submitting a comment that gets an upvote. This is to prevent spamming.

analognoise 10y ago

I'm interested, but mostly in the part where we get to silicon - implementing yet another CPU in VHDL isn't all that uncommon. What about the "to silicon" part of this equation is out there now?

tlrobinson 10y ago
In this talk https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12101908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12101908 they said their toolchain can output layouts for the CPU on silicon, and it would cost about $25,000 to have photomasks made, and I think about $0.50 per chip.
- analognoise 10y ago
  I haven't seen that part of their toolchain; that's where I'm interested. Also, seeing a successful test of this toolchain in working silicon, with a known vendor and a good process, would be extremely helpful for the community (if other people are going to get aboard, which I hope they are).
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    Look up Qflow open-source flow. It's the likely toolchain OSS projects will use. Combines Yosys front-end, ABC backend, and custom tool (Qrouter) for routing. Worth evaluating.
    - analognoise 10y ago
      Yosys is a Verilog front-end; this is being designed in VHDL. It looks like there is a translator, but I'm unsure about its license, source availability, and capability.