ARM is still British though, no doubt still with backdoors. RISC-V may be our only hope, but even then it seems that companies are just using the open source ISA to make their own proprietary chips, not to make actual open source chips.
ARM is still British though, no doubt still with backdoors.
The ARM architecture has many implementations and can be scanned for backdoors when creating your own silicon. You just implied the Russians are too stupid to figure that out themselves.
RISC-V may be our only hope
I also hope for more RISC-V devices, but until they arrive on the market, ARM architecture is a good counterpoint to the x86 monopolies.
Do they get the complete core designs including what transistor does what? I was under the impression that the ARM company just sold generic cores but not information on their internal workings.
Do they get the complete core designs including what transistor does what?
Depends on how large the customer is and/or how much they pay. They can also do 3D X-ray scanning to compare the layout provided with what is actually delivered. X-ray-ing stuff and closely monitoring manufacturing including cryptographically signed layouts for wafer production is pretty common in the militaries and other highly sensitive areas.
ARM is still British though, no doubt still with backdoors. RISC-V may be our only hope, but even then it seems that companies are just using the open source ISA to make their own proprietary chips, not to make actual open source chips.
The ARM architecture has many implementations and can be scanned for backdoors when creating your own silicon. You just implied the Russians are too stupid to figure that out themselves.
I also hope for more RISC-V devices, but until they arrive on the market, ARM architecture is a good counterpoint to the x86 monopolies.
Do they get the complete core designs including what transistor does what? I was under the impression that the ARM company just sold generic cores but not information on their internal workings.
Depends on how large the customer is and/or how much they pay. They can also do 3D X-ray scanning to compare the layout provided with what is actually delivered. X-ray-ing stuff and closely monitoring manufacturing including cryptographically signed layouts for wafer production is pretty common in the militaries and other highly sensitive areas.
See also: https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-hunt-for-the-kill-switch / https://www.nature.com/articles/nature21698 / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_backdoor