We already have some. I know the Arduino CPU is open source (slow) and there are open source MIPS CPUs but again they are slower than ARM and X86 CPUs.
The problem is people don't want slow CPUs.
Is it time for open processors?
51–60 of 236 posts
Re: Is it time for open processors?
#52with open you could have mainboard with one single chip and you then pop in a SOC that matches the IO you have.
open also means making the software that creates the chips design open too, otherwise you'll just get leapfrogged by closed designs.
This could overcome being a few generations behind on fab tech, just have the exact silicon you need.
you could also design open mainboard design with multiple zif sockets, this would be very flexible, and maybe futureproof.
Re: Is it time for open processors?
#53We already have some. I know the Arduino CPU is open source (slow) and there are open source MIPS CPUs but again they are slower than ARM and X86 CPUs. The problem is people don't want slow CPUs.
> I know the Arduino CPU is open source
It's not. The board layout of the Arduino boards is open-source, as is the software around them, but the microcontroller on them is not.
Re: Is it time for open processors?
#54The problem is less about openness itself and more about quality of auditing. Open isn't a magic bullet. As I understand, these latest CPU vulnerabilities were in the spec themselves. You could've found them by reading the manual. See what good that did us. But I posit that open projects do better with audits than closed because they are more likely to have open audits as well, and an open audit is harder to ignore o…
> Open isn't a magic bullet.
> more about quality of auditing.
Exactly. Being open makes things easier to audit, and to an extent encourages better due diligence (as embarrassments due to silly mistakes or, worse, attempted cover-ups, are more public!), but it doesn't enforce this in any way nor does it guarantee quality or completeness.
Re: Is it time for open processors?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
In many of the same ways that open software is usually better than closed software. In particular, greater scrutiny of specifications and microcode ought to lead to better quality outcomes. This whole debate feels eerily similar to the emergence of open source software into the public eye, back in the 90s.
> In particular, greater scrutiny of specifications and microcode ought to lead to better quality outcomes. Which given the CVE entries per day isn't necessarily true, in spite of pull requests being reviewed.
No - open source is a specific case of the general rule that there is no such thing as a silver bullet :)
But it does make possible a bunch of superior workflows that are impossible with proprietary software, and makes certain types of failure common to propriety software much harder.
Re: Is it time for open processors?
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
If one only considers power / speed and cost, then open will certainly mean worse. However a processor with verifiable functionality has value. It's more trustworthy. It can be checked for accidental, or deliberate, security flaws. In many scenarios, I don't care how fast a processor is, if it's leaking data then it's worthless.
For me this is an extreme view. If your security demands are that high I'm sure you will find even nowadays CPUs which are in that level of "trustworthyness" you want. One funny example: You can use a Raspberry Pi which is not affected by Meltdown or Spectre ;) https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/why-raspberry-pi-isnt-vulne...
> For me this is an extreme view.
Agreed, but for critical applications it might be appropriate.
> If your security demands are that high I'm sure you will find even nowadays CPUs which are in that level of "trustworthyness" you want. One funny example: You can use a Raspberry Pi which is not affected by Meltdown or Spectre ;)
Having the level of verificability the parent asks for is a lot more than "not affected by Spectre", and the Raspberry Pi is not very open in that regard.
Re: Is it time for open processors?
#57The problem is less about openness itself and more about quality of auditing. Open isn't a magic bullet. As I understand, these latest CPU vulnerabilities were in the spec themselves. You could've found them by reading the manual. See what good that did us. But I posit that open projects do better with audits than closed because they are more likely to have open audits as well, and an open audit is harder to ignore o…
No the vulnerabilities could not have been found by reading the manual. The researchers had to reverse engineer how branch predictor aliasing works for example.
I recommend reading the Google project zero blog post on them - they're easy to follow.
Re: Is it time for open processors?
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
If one only considers power / speed and cost, then open will certainly mean worse. However a processor with verifiable functionality has value. It's more trustworthy. It can be checked for accidental, or deliberate, security flaws. In many scenarios, I don't care how fast a processor is, if it's leaking data then it's worthless.
For me this is an extreme view. If your security demands are that high I'm sure you will find even nowadays CPUs which are in that level of "trustworthyness" you want. One funny example: You can use a Raspberry Pi which is not affected by Meltdown or Spectre ;) https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/why-raspberry-pi-isnt-vulne...
I understand that security is difficult, and that one can never be completely secure.
But is wanting to know what my processor is doing, or wanting it to be free of undocumented, obfuscated, proprietary code that runs at a higher priority than any software, really that extreme a view?
We base so much of human progress on these little wafers of silicon, it shouldn't be extreme to want to know what they do.
Re: Is it time for open processors?
#59Open Processors is a very bad idea. Look at what's happening to Android. The same thing will happen with CPU's. Every OEM will fork the open design and put all of their stupidity inside it in the name of features and security. Bugs like Spectre and Meltdown will become commonplace. The entire time of kernel devs will be spent working around the various 'features' of the OEM designs. Then someone will come up with a J…
Nonsense. OEM can buy ARM "IP" and jam it into a SoC with plenty of poorly designed tweaks and additional devices and it's not happening.
Also, open does not mean that random changes are allowed as part of the original design. You can have a license that prevents using the original name of a CPU on modified versions.
Re: Is it time for open processors?
#60Open does not mean better. This is not how our world works. Would be nice to have but I assume every Intel chip I can buy (even with the throtteling) will be more powerful and cheaper than any open processors. There is also much more than only architecture this thing (this works in software but not in hardware)... this would only work if a big player like AMD or Intel jumps on this ship (but it would be like giving a…
More powerful, probably. Cheaper? Ha ha ha! Intel has huge margins on its desktop processors. Until Ryzen they were basically a monopoly and set their prices to be very high. Look how much they dropped them after Ryzen.
Risc-V is going to allow extremely cheap processors. They will probably not match Intel's single thread performance ever though.