open ASIC SoC

[coderman]

On 11/4/14, Bryan Bishop <kanzure at gmail.com> wrote:
> ...
> Are there any open-source ASICs for wifi, bluetooth, gsm, cdma, or
> other communication chips?

build in array of direct quadrature modulator circuits (RFIC) in the
desired bands for software stacks across all of the above.  that gets
you performance and efficiency, all in one! (or many, as it were)

there are open source SDR stacks for some of the above, however,
traditional SDR as crudely shoved into a SoC would not work so well.
this is a longer discussion, of course :)



> I would appreciate any references or links you can provide me to
> working chains of custody and their threat models. I am curious to see
> what a good one looks like.

a trusted set of auditors is on premise able to observe the wafer
processing, litho, etc. to die prep and packing, with device testing
results for each core attached.

packages collected till end of run, then trusted auditors depart with
the set of presumably trusted fabrication parts.



> I think that chain of custody is going to
> be problematic because of dopant-level trojans,...

the selective FIB deconstruction to verify, along with constructions
resistant to stealthy dopant tampering, could leave you more confident
that the set of chips so run were not surreptitiously tampered with.

obviously, if chain of custody ever broken, the chips become suspect.



this is all an amusing thought exercise, given the complete lack of
anything remotely as hard to run software wise on top of this
idealistic open soc :)


best regards,