[Cryptography] ORWL - The First Open Source, Physically Secure Computer

[Ben Laurie]

On 29 August 2016 at 23:11, Perry E. Metzger <perry at piermont.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 29 Aug 2016 23:01:28 +0100 Ben Laurie <ben at links.org> wrote:
>> >> https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/beri/ +
>> >> https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/
>> >
>> > Of course, BERI and CHERI are secure in a distinct sense -- they
>> > are implementations of a capability architecture on top of the
>> > more ordinary MIPS instruction set. They are not, however,
>> > formally verified designs, and in that sense, are no more or less
>> > likely to have bugs or back doors than any other soft core
>> > design.
>>
>> I will agree that they are not _yet_ formally verified. However,
>> that work is under way.
>
> That would be quite the coup! I'm looking forward to the existence of
> a formally verified architecture. Please do mention it here when it
> happens. (That said, I wish this was on top of RISC-V or some similar
> non-proprietary architecture, as MIPS has associated IP issues.

RISC-V did not exist when this research was started, however, CHERI
will fit on top of any conventional CPU architecture, so there's no
problem doing that.

Also, MIPS as implemented does not have IP issues - and the whole
thing is open source.