5 ms·
This a rather broad question, one may as well ask 'Are locks secure?' or even 'Are computers secure?'. I'm not hugely convinced the open licensing of the ISA e
by gchadwick 4y ago
This a rather broad question, one may as well ask 'Are locks secure?' or even 'Are computers secure?'.
I'm not hugely convinced the open licensing of the ISA enables better security. Computer architecture and computer security researchers have worked with closed licensing ISAs for years and it hasn't stopped them finding issues.
Open silicon on the other hand does form a good basis for secure design though one must not make the mistake that open design inherently provides better security. Rather it's more about providing trust and provenance (along with a bunch of other collateral) so design users can have confidence in the security.
Like many RISC-V articles this one sadly freely mixes open ISA licensing with open design and they are not the same!
- rhn_mk1 4y ago> Computer architecture and computer security researchers have worked with closed licensing ISAs for years and it hasn't stopped them finding issues. I think this is kind of backwards. You want people to have access and find issues, so that you can correct them. Opening the ISA solves one half of this problem: access and finding.
- ribit 4y agoWhy is open ISA better in respect to this than simply documented ISA? Is this about public availability of reference implementations or some sort of validation tools?
- SanjayMehta 4y agoAn open ISA merely allows anyone to implement their own core without worrying about getting sued.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gchadwick 4y agoWell take arm and x86, plenty of research papers done on these (e.g. the original speculative execution attacks) but they are closed licensing. Were the ISA specifications also fully closed (i.e. no reading without an NDA, strict restrictions on any published research even if you did get access etc), then yes that would be an impediment, but practically that's not what we see.