[Libre-soc-dev] Massive EU Grant (up to 26 million) deadline 21st Oct

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

---
crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68


On Sun, Oct 17, 2021 at 4:11 AM Jacob Lifshay <programmerjake at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 16, 2021, 07:26 lkcl <luke.leighton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > folks i noticed a few days ago a huge opportunity, an EU Grant that even
> > says "Open Hardware/Software".
> >
>
> ooh!
>
> >
> >
> >
> https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/horizon-cl4-2021-digital-emerging-01-01
>
>
> Noticed it includes "Proposals should include research on advanced
> hardware-based security at silicon-level",


the one that i am putting in which definitely qualifies is to use this
technique:
https://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1977-05.pdf

wires distributed strategically throughout the processor with analog
ring circuits (a PLL in effect) will be affected by local EMF.  thus by
running
any given program, the frequency will change (HP's Signature Analysis
was a bit more sophisticated but you get the idea).

it then becomes possible to create an audit trail showing the results of
running a program and if the silicon was ever tampered with (some rogue
unauthorised transistors) they will show up *even if not active* because
they will change the layout characteristics.

sounds like the idea I came up
> with for meltdown/spectre-proof (for timing/cache/etc. side-channels --
> *not* for power side-channels) speculative execution:
> https://bugs.libre-soc.org/show_bug.cgi?id=209
>

it's close enough so yes.

bear in mind we'll still be under time pressure and have chosen
the Scoreboard system due to its power consumption saving, so
the "Shadow/Cancellation" system will need to be part of that.

(Shadow-Cancellation "holds off" any "damage" by preventing
and prohibiting anything that is executed speculatively from
causing writes, until it is 100% known that it will not need to
be "undone".  this is the total opposite of "Rollback" strategies
which take full snapshots and back them out if there was ever
an "undo" needed)

l.