The lowRISC blog

lowRISC Extends UKRI’s Digital Security by Design Programme Support Into Operational Technology

September 12, 2023

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) recently announced that its CHERI-based Digital Security by Design Programme (DSbD) technologies have already demonstrated significant value in sectors where high integrity, resilient, and safety-focused applications are paramount, including avionics, automotive and embedded systems. DSbD aims to provide foundational support to developers centred around a technology enhancement in the central processor (CPU): Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions, or (CHERI). CHERI has the potential to prevent around 2/3rds of current exploits, whilst simultaneously providing new software methods to help maintain the operational resilience and integrity of applications.

Ibex Inside: How and Why We Built OpenTitan’s RISC-V Core

July 17, 2023

OpenTitan® recently announced the RTL freeze of Earl Grey, the first chip tapeout of its open source silicon root of trust (RoT). The first engineering samples should be in our hands before the end of the year. OpenTitan’s mission is to provide a secure root of trust, which is complemented by a secure processor core. To address this need, we elevated one of the most widely deployed, highest quality RISC-V cores in academia to the industrial-level of quality characteristic of this project.

OpenTitan’s RTL Freeze - Leveraging Transparency to Create Trustworthy Computing

June 16, 2023

We are delighted to announce an important development for OpenTitan®: RTL Freeze for the Earl Grey discrete, the first OpenTitan chip tapeout. This milestone is a source of immense pride for lowRISC and our OpenTitan partners, because it’s a concrete demonstration of the success of the Silicon Commons™ approach to making silicon radically more transparent and trustworthy. In partnership with Nuvoton, a major TPM vendor, this RTL freeze means that the OpenTitan coalition will have engineering samples of the discrete silicon root of trust (RoT) this calendar year.

A Major Milestone for OpenTitan

April 20, 2023

We are excited to announce today that the OpenTitan project has hit a major tapeout milestone: a feature freeze of its open-source RTL. Together with our partners, we began the OpenTitan project in 2019 with the goal of producing the world’s first open-source silicon Root of Trust (RoT). With this new achievement we are a step closer to realising that goal. Getting to this point has taken a lot of coordinated work, as we’ve had to navigate the many stumbling blocks that have traditionally made open-source silicon development a challenge.

lowRISC wins OpenUK 2022 Awards Hardware Category

December 2, 2022

We are thrilled to have been selected as the winner of the OpenUK 2022 Awards Hardware Category and would like to thank OpenUK, the award sponsors StackPublishing, the judges and all our hard working staff at lowRISC without whom this would not be possible.

Introducing the Foundation of True Security - the Silicon Root of Trust

October 31, 2022

Recent headlines about ransomware attacks, account phishing, and identity theft continue to underscore the critical importance of cybersecurity in our everyday lives. This has led to a growing awareness among most businesses and households of important mitigations like encryption, 2-factor authentication and verified software updates. But guess what? There’s an unsung hero behind all these safeguards that underpins their effectiveness: the silicon Root of Trust (RoT). And yet, despite the vital role these RoTs play, few people, including even security professionals, are familiar with what a Root of Trust is — or in fact that it even exists.

lowRISC Appoints Cybersecurity Expert Prof. Dr. Claudia Eckert to Board of Directors

October 5, 2022

CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom, Oct. 5th, 2022 – lowRISC C.I.C., the open source system on a chip (SoC) organization, today announced the appointment of Prof. Dr. Claudia Eckert to its board of directors. Eckert holds the chair for IT Security in the Department of Computer Science at Technical University of Munich (TUM) and is director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied and Integrated Security (AISEC) in Munich, overseeing more than 220 researchers.

Security Verification of an Open Source Hardware Root of Trust

August 3, 2022

OpenTitan is a powerful open source silicon root of trust project, designed from scratch as a transparent, trustworthy and secure implementation for enterprises, platform providers and chip manufacturers. Featuring numerous hardware security features ranging from secure boot and remote attestation to secure storage of private user data. The open source development model allows OpenTitan to serve as a vehicle for innovation in academia, but also as an effective commercial platform as well.

lowRISC Acquires NewAE Technology, Adding Advanced Security Analysis Tools to the OpenTitan Platform

June 2, 2022

lowRISC C.I.C., the open source organization dedicated to bringing secure collaborative innovation to silicon development, today announced the acquisition of NewAE Technology, Inc., a privately-held designer and manufacturer of broadly accessible silicon security analysis tools. The acquisition brings added momentum to lowRISC, whose OpenTitan project – a collaboration between lowRISC, Google, Western Digital, Seagate and other commercial and academic partners – has created the first transparent, high-quality reference design and integration guidelines for silicon root of trust (RoT) chips.

Andy Hopper knighted for services to Computer Technology

June 15, 2021

lowRISC is delighted that Andy Hopper, lowRISC’s independent chair, has been knighted for services to Computer Technology. Andy said “As you might imagine I am delighted. What I have achieved is all a result of teamwork. The University of Cambridge and the Cambridge Cluster have provided a wonderfully collaborative and flexible environment within which I have had the good fortune to work for over 40 years.” The culture he created, and his interest in and support for doing things in non-standard ways, has helped to establish over 200 start-ups, including lowRISC CIC.