[5674] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
RE: more re Encryption Technology Limits Eased
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Zombie Cow)
Sat Sep 18 20:08:39 1999
Date: Sat, 18 Sep 1999 23:47:54 +0300 (EEST)
From: Zombie Cow <waste@zor.hut.fi>
To: Antonomasia <ant@notatla.demon.co.uk>
Cc: cryptography@c2.net, cypherpunks@toad.com
In-Reply-To: <199909172126.WAA04886@notatla.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9909182343180.25592-100000@zor.hut.fi>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
On Fri, 17 Sep 1999, Antonomasia wrote:
> From: Lucky Green <shamrock@cypherpunks.to>
>
> > after he began talking about some very curious, very complex, very
> > undocumented instruction he discovered in late-model CPU's. Instructions
> > that will put the processor into a mode that makes OS protections
> > irrelevant.
>
> This is scary. It could be time to hoard antique computers.
Or start producing Open Sourced CPUs and motherboards.
IBM has an Open Source PPC motherboard, and here's an
article referring to an Open Source CPU by Sun:
(Well, they're not really "Open Source", but still, open enough..)
(Search www.techweb.com for the source URL, I don't have it here.)
--
TechWeb News
Sun Offers Open-Source Sparc
(09/14/99, 2:33 p.m. ET)
By Craig Matsumoto, EE Times
The adoption of open-source principles at Sun Microsystems continues
this week when the company puts a Sparc microprocessor under its
Community Source License (CSL) for the first time, hoping to spread
Sparc's use in system-on-a-chip designs.
Some in the open-source community have criticized the CSL for
deviating from what they call true open-sourcelicensing, and fellow
processor vendors are questioning whether Sun can make the CSL work.
But Sun's efforts beg an even larger question: whether the open-source
policy that helped spawn the GNU and Linux software communities can do
the same for a piece of hardware.
"At the software level, if we look at Linux and other products, it's
something that allowed a whole industry to get together and get de
facto standards," said Derek Meyer, vice president of marketing at
MIPS Technologies, in Mountain View, Calif. "At the silicon level,
it's different."
Sun began its CSL movement last year with Java and Jini software and
is gradually applying the license to other products. The idea is to
create a community of designers that can share tweaks and upgrades to
the circuitry via the Web, said Fadi Azhari, Sun's group marketing
manager for Sparc.
In the case of hardware, that means Sun wants "to make Sparc the core
for any system-on-a-chip (SoC) architectures," Azhari said.
Sun also said it wants to spread the architecture to smaller
companies, as Microsparc is being aimed at SoC for small network-edge
devices, such as set-top boxes. Azhari estimates such devices will
sell for between $10 and $15.
RTL files for Microsparc IIep are due to be posted on Sun's website on
Tuesday. PicoJava was the first core to be offered this way, in April,
and an Ultrasparc core is promised by the end of the year. For
Microsparc, the RTL code for the IIep core (complete with PCI [LINK]
controller and memory interface) will be available, along with a
programmers' reference manual, application notes and a verification
test suite.
Anyone can download and manipulate the RTL file without charge, but by
doing so they agree to the CSL terms, which must be viewed before
downloading. Specifically, changes and improvements to the processor
must be offered back to the CSL community for free.
Royalty payments are made to Sun upon volume shipments of any product
developed. In a change from previous CSL licenses, which left payments
up to negotiation, the royalty for Microsparc is set at 3 percent of
the average selling price.
On the support side, Sun's CSL Web pages will include links to
third-party OS and tool providers who can offer items such as
compilers and debuggers that will be required to work with the
processors. Sun can't guarantee that the third-party partners will be
willing to offer their own versions of the CSL, "although we encourage
them to adopt a similar model," Azhari said.
The plan is to create a community around Microsparc, where smaller
developers can mingle online with tool and software vendors to wrest
possibilities from the architecture. Changes and new peripherals
created under the CSL have to be offered back to the community.
Bug fixes, likewise, are reported to the community, and Sun ultimately
decides which changes and fixes get incorporated into the next
Microsparc version. "So we still maintain the stewardship," Azhari
said.
It's similar to the spirit of open-source software. If no one owns a
piece of code, and the code is free for anyone to use and modify, then
new uses for the code are developed more rapidly simply because so
many more people are working on the project. This is how the GNU
operating environment and its critical Linux kernel both came to
fruition, through the community-minded efforts of engineers worldwide,
collaborating on the Net.
In the case of Microsparc, Sun said it is hoping Sparc can displace
MIPS [LINK] -- and to a lesser extent, ARM [LINK] -- as the core of
choice in SoC designs. By offering RTL code for the part, Sun said it
expects to create an alternative for smaller designers unable to
afford MIPS' licensing fees.
But Azhari said the company will run the CSL community as just that --
a community, and not a branch of Sun. "It's more about expansion, not
'I want to control you,' " Azhari said.
"We believe there will be more companies joining in -- more
innovative, smaller companies," he added. One of Azhari's hopes, he
said, is the CSL could help Sparc find its way into more experimental
systems that challenge the architecture.
The strategy might stand a chance, according to Stanley Shebs, senior
staff engineer for Cygnus Solutions, in Sunnyvale, Calif., a software
and services company that has long championed open-source business
models. What happens over time, Shebs said, is open-source software
has a "corrosive" effect on competition, because the open-source
version continually improves and eventually becomes superior.
"It's not entirely irrational for Sun to think something similar might
happen against MIPS," Shebs said. "That's an interesting question,
though, would that actually happen in hardware?"
_________________________________________________________________
"Even if you get the intellectual property for free, how do you knit
[IP blocks] together? No company can give intellectual property for
free and support for free."
-- Derek Meyer
MIPS Technologies
_________________________________________________________________
Some vendors don't think so, and MIPS is one of them. Company
officials have considered open-source models for distributing its
microprocessor core, but they feel the model just doesn't suit
hardware well, Meyer said.
"We've certainly looked at this thoroughly," he said. "Our conclusion
is that people who received intellectual property [IP], who get access
to designs, do need support. They also need infrastructure." Meyer
isn't convinced Sun's efforts will be enough to create that
infrastructure.
"Even if you get the intellectual property for free, how do you knit
[IP blocks] together? No company can give intellectual property for
free and support for free," Meyer said.
That attitude "might be a mistake," Shebs said. "You don't support
these guys. You tell them they're on their own," and let them go to
the community for help, he said. In fact, that's the model Cygnus has
used successfully. "We do answer all our paying customers. The
non-paying customers get whatever leftover attention we have, and they
understand that," he said.
No Easy Road
Even if support and software are available, Sun faces a host of other
challenges in offering processors for free. For one, it still takes
expertise to do anything useful with a processor core.
"The CPU core is only a small portion of the job. Once you have the
Sparc, then what?" said Stanley Yang, president and CEO of Triscend,
in Mountain View, Calif. "We have two years of development into the
circuitry that goes around the 8051 core in [Triscend's processor] the
E5. Even if you assume that you only need a bus and a few simple
peripherals to go around the Sparc core, that can be several months of
work with a consultant before you even have a design ready to test."
Manufacturing is a more basic obstacle, and the most obvious
distinction between open-source hardware and software. "You would have
to make a substantial investment, even if you had the chip front to
back, to actually get something fabbed," Shebs said. In fact, the
manufacturing question is MIPS' No. 1 reason for avoiding the
open-source option, according to Meyer.
Hardware compatibility is also trickier than software compatibility,
according to Meyer. Software code can simply be overwritten with
patches, but hardware often can't be changed adequately. "Even if you
take the RTL to a designer and put the source code back in, the
physical implementation could do different things," causing trouble in
areas such as its memory subsystems or I/Os, Meyer said.
Finally, some observers are afraid a company could wind up agreeing to
the CSL unknowingly, through the actions of a single engineer.
"That engineer who clicks on that website is acknowledging on behalf
of the company for which he or she works that he or she is taking
receipt of something, which essentially contaminates that company,"
Meyer said.
That raises concerns for Jim Bell, general manager of embedded
software at Hewlett-Packard. "We see that every relevant engineer in
the company is warned," he said. "You may very well find yourself
obligated to give Sun a free, perpetual license to whatever you've
done."
Bell characterized Sun's CSL -- for both hardware and software
products -- as "an obvious attempt to gain the advantages of open
sourcing without the obligations."
Small Is Beautiful
Cygnus' Shebs said he believes Sun is on the right track in one area,
offering only smaller, embedded cores under the CSL.
"What they're putting out is not the latest and greatest Sparc -- it's
the old one that no one's using any more," he said. "It makes sense to
do that as an open-source thing because you're not losing anything,
and you are gaining the advantage of having more people work on it."
Offering an expensive, proprietary part through a kind of open-source
licensing would be a nice gesture but would make no business sense, he
said.
"If you have a chip design that's worth $1 billion, there's no
incentive to put that on the Net," he said. "For $1 billion, you can
hire 1,000 programmers, at least."
Sun still has its toe in the water with regard to offering processors
online. Only three parts are in the works, and the company has yet to
decide if the recently announced MAJC architecture will be included
eventually. Still, Shebs said Sun might be on to something, if it uses
open-source ideas to spur interest in older parts.
"It may take a while, too," Shebs said. "[Open-source is] both a
powerful and a weak strategy. It's weak because it's slow. It's
powerful because it's potentially inexorable."
Additional reporting by Ron Wilson. TW
