6 ms·

Most people miss the real value of such projects. They serve two important purposes: First: they are intended to build a local pool of expertise and capability

Most people miss the real value of such projects. They serve two important purposes: First: they are intended to build a local pool of expertise and capability around semiconductor design and fabrication within the country. Second: although the chip itself is laughably underpowered compared to a modern ARM or Intel processor, it has one characteristic that makes it very interesting to the Indian government: they know exactly what is in the chip. No Intel Management Engine crap. No hardware backdoors. This could be a serious point in favour of the processor, if it is used in SCADA applications in sensitive industrial manufacturing processes.

peteey 8y ago
>No hardware backdoors Oh you sweet summer child
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't do this here.
mikepurvis 8y ago
How is the backdoor situation when you license ARM and implement it yourself on an FPGA? I'm assuming there are big sections that are still black boxes you just paste in, but I would think that would still help contain the potential exploitation vectors a lot— like, if you were willing to design the ethernet peripheral/stack yourself, you immediately eliminate a lot of unknowns.
- godelmachine 8y ago
  FPGA’s consume heck lotta power. Totally not Indian.
- PorterDuff 8y ago
  That's a good question. I've worked on a couple of products with those and never thought about it. It seems to me that the interesting angle to this would be to avoid manufacture and instead spend your time on radical CPU designs on FPGA to be made from scratch later. No doubt that doesn't meet the needs of the folks in India.
- petra 8y ago
  Long ago i remember briefly reading some research articles about FPGA vulnerabilities. Don't know if it's practical, but people designing critical system are justifiably paranoid.
  - penagwin 8y ago
    The ultimate security perspective is to assume that you're defending against an unlimited resource nation-state that's specifically targetting you. Obviously, there is no such thing as "complete security" but you can try to secure what you can, that's why people concern themselves with what may seem like unlikely revenues of attack. I mean depending on how critical your system is, it can really change how you operate. Get a virus on your computer? Some people use anti-virus, and when that says it "removed the virus" they're happy. Other people would only be happy with a complete OS reinstall from a fresh ISO made on a different machine as acceptable. Still other's would require new hardware, it's possible (and has been seen in the wild) to reflash the ROM of the motherboard, or potentially many other low-level chips through software, and to persist the virus through that. Likely no, just depends.
0815test 8y ago
They could have used RV32 or even RV32E architecture (RV32 with 16 registers only, gets rid of a lot of area occupation in the smallest chips) and make it far more useful. RV architecture can scale down quite a bit, I don't buy the claim that it just won't fit in 180nm. That's the node that the first Pentium 3's were designed for!
stcredzero 8y ago
Most people miss the real value of such projects. They serve two important purposes: First: they are intended to build a local pool of expertise and capability around semiconductor design and fabrication within the country. This has real strategic implications for India. So much modern military hardware depends on microprocessors. So what happens to India, if most of the chip fabs fall into the hands of hostile foreign powers? (Or, what happens if foreign powers who have or are near the chip fabs become hostile in the future?)
- ip26 8y ago
  In the first stage, AJIT has been manufactured in the government-owned Semiconductor Laboratory (SCL), Chandigarh, with a technology that offers the smallest building block of the size 180 nanometers. The researchers also plan to commercially manufacture the processor using more advanced techniques that provide the smallest building block of size 65 nm or 45 nm -- TFA Older nodes, being well-understood mature technologies, can be manufactured domestically.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    Older nodes, being well-understood mature technologies, can be manufactured domestically. On the modern battlefield, one side having considerably more processing power than the other side might swing the strategic balance. This means more sophisticated missiles, ECM, battlefield coordination, targeting, etc... all on the side having access to the superior chip fab technology in wartime. Now think about the chip fabs in Taiwan.
    - wolfgke 8y ago
      > On the modern battlefield, one side having considerably more processing power than the other side might swing the strategic balance. This means more sophisticated missiles, ECM, battlefield coordination, targeting, etc... all on the side having access to the superior chip fab technology in wartime. At least for space applications, it is common to use very old processes because of certification and, more importantly, processors that use larger processes are easier to radiation-harden. I don't know whether this also holds for military applications, but it seems at least plausible to me.
primitivesuave 8y ago
The first point seems to be the major focus of the project - it was developed entirely within IIT Bombay, which is one of the top 10 schools of India. As to the second point, the people in power within the Indian government, even the self-appointed "technocrats", are ill-informed on cybersecurity and generally only take on endeavors that appeal to a largely uneducated electorate. The Indian government seems to be focused on technology that helps meet basic bureaucratic needs, like Aadhaar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aadhaar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aadhaar).
cabalamat 8y ago
> No hardware backdoors. This could be a serious point in favour of the processor, if it is used in SCADA applications in sensitive industrial manufacturing processes. This is an important point. In the future, polities who can't or won't fabricate their own chips will lose their independence to ones that do.

peteey 8y ago

>No hardware backdoors Oh you sweet summer child

dang 8y ago
Please don't do this here.

mikepurvis 8y ago

How is the backdoor situation when you license ARM and implement it yourself on an FPGA? I'm assuming there are big sections that are still black boxes you just paste in, but I would think that would still help contain the potential exploitation vectors a lot— like, if you were willing to design the ethernet peripheral/stack yourself, you immediately eliminate a lot of unknowns.

godelmachine 8y ago
FPGA’s consume heck lotta power. Totally not Indian.
PorterDuff 8y ago
That's a good question. I've worked on a couple of products with those and never thought about it. It seems to me that the interesting angle to this would be to avoid manufacture and instead spend your time on radical CPU designs on FPGA to be made from scratch later. No doubt that doesn't meet the needs of the folks in India.
petra 8y ago
Long ago i remember briefly reading some research articles about FPGA vulnerabilities. Don't know if it's practical, but people designing critical system are justifiably paranoid.
- penagwin 8y ago
  The ultimate security perspective is to assume that you're defending against an unlimited resource nation-state that's specifically targetting you. Obviously, there is no such thing as "complete security" but you can try to secure what you can, that's why people concern themselves with what may seem like unlikely revenues of attack. I mean depending on how critical your system is, it can really change how you operate. Get a virus on your computer? Some people use anti-virus, and when that says it "removed the virus" they're happy. Other people would only be happy with a complete OS reinstall from a fresh ISO made on a different machine as acceptable. Still other's would require new hardware, it's possible (and has been seen in the wild) to reflash the ROM of the motherboard, or potentially many other low-level chips through software, and to persist the virus through that. Likely no, just depends.

0815test 8y ago

They could have used RV32 or even RV32E architecture (RV32 with 16 registers only, gets rid of a lot of area occupation in the smallest chips) and make it far more useful. RV architecture can scale down quite a bit, I don't buy the claim that it just won't fit in 180nm. That's the node that the first Pentium 3's were designed for!

stcredzero 8y ago

Most people miss the real value of such projects. They serve two important purposes: First: they are intended to build a local pool of expertise and capability around semiconductor design and fabrication within the country. This has real strategic implications for India. So much modern military hardware depends on microprocessors. So what happens to India, if most of the chip fabs fall into the hands of hostile foreign powers? (Or, what happens if foreign powers who have or are near the chip fabs become hostile in the future?)

ip26 8y ago
In the first stage, AJIT has been manufactured in the government-owned Semiconductor Laboratory (SCL), Chandigarh, with a technology that offers the smallest building block of the size 180 nanometers. The researchers also plan to commercially manufacture the processor using more advanced techniques that provide the smallest building block of size 65 nm or 45 nm -- TFA Older nodes, being well-understood mature technologies, can be manufactured domestically.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Older nodes, being well-understood mature technologies, can be manufactured domestically. On the modern battlefield, one side having considerably more processing power than the other side might swing the strategic balance. This means more sophisticated missiles, ECM, battlefield coordination, targeting, etc... all on the side having access to the superior chip fab technology in wartime. Now think about the chip fabs in Taiwan.
  - wolfgke 8y ago
    > On the modern battlefield, one side having considerably more processing power than the other side might swing the strategic balance. This means more sophisticated missiles, ECM, battlefield coordination, targeting, etc... all on the side having access to the superior chip fab technology in wartime. At least for space applications, it is common to use very old processes because of certification and, more importantly, processors that use larger processes are easier to radiation-harden. I don't know whether this also holds for military applications, but it seems at least plausible to me.

primitivesuave 8y ago

The first point seems to be the major focus of the project - it was developed entirely within IIT Bombay, which is one of the top 10 schools of India. As to the second point, the people in power within the Indian government, even the self-appointed "technocrats", are ill-informed on cybersecurity and generally only take on endeavors that appeal to a largely uneducated electorate. The Indian government seems to be focused on technology that helps meet basic bureaucratic needs, like Aadhaar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aadhaar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aadhaar).

cabalamat 8y ago

> No hardware backdoors. This could be a serious point in favour of the processor, if it is used in SCADA applications in sensitive industrial manufacturing processes. This is an important point. In the future, polities who can't or won't fabricate their own chips will lose their independence to ones that do.