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Weird how they specifically point out "free as in freedom", but then the real brain of this entire thing is a proprietary STM32F103 MCU.
by starsinspace 9y ago
Weird how they specifically point out "free as in freedom", but then the real brain of this entire thing is a proprietary STM32F103 MCU.
- throwawayfinal 9y agoThey say the design of the product, not the components are free, if we're going to be pedantic.
- bb88 9y agoTo be fair, yes, the proprietary nature of a particular chip is bad for open source, but on the other hand, the marginal cost of a chip is not zero, like it is for software. There's the chip fabrication costs which only goes down in quantity. That means there's an inherent risk in developing a new chip. However, if you're that concerned about it, there are open source designs which create free truly random bits, so you are free to choose a design that meets your need.
- tonyarkles 9y agoAdditionally, and I'm not positive that they've actually done this, but the chip also has fully open toolchain. While the guts of the chip aren't open source, it's possible for the firmware to be 100% open source without any binary blobs.
- mmagin 9y agoYeah, we don't trust RDRAND but we trust this?