As hardware and software become ever more entwined and the practice of hardware running only cryptographically signed software becomes more widespread, it's becoming clear the freedoms so hard-won by the open source movement will soon be lost without a truly free and open foundation for the full stack of hardware and software: silicon.

 

In this talk, we'll cover the basics of what goes into designing, fabricating, and testing integrated circuits, processors, and peripherals embodied in silicon. We'll briefly review the key historical events that got us to where we are today, and lay out a roadmap for where we want to be in the near future.

 

We will draw on detailed firsthand examples from recent projects each striving in their own way to open different layers of the hardware stack, such as the Talos Secure Workstation, the EOMA68 modular computing project, the Open-V RISC-V-based microprocessor, the SiFive HiFive1 RISC-V dev board, ORWL, and others.

 

We'll also discuss how you can help!  No previous experience or specialized knowledge is needed to understand this talk.