lowRISC News

lowRISC and Microsoft Collaborate to Help Bring the Revolutionary CHERIoT-Ibex Core to Production Grade

June 20, 2024

Partners Work Together on the Design Verification of CHERIoT-Ibex, Bringing Class-Leading Hardware Memory Safety to Applications with Tight Power, Area and Financial Budgets CAMBRIDGE, England – June 20, 2024 – lowRISC C.I.C., the open silicon ecosystem organization, today announced a formal collaboration with Microsoft to help bring its CHERIoT-Ibex design to production grade, leveraging lowRISC’s comprehensive open-source silicon development methodology, the Silicon Commons. “We are delighted to be working with Microsoft to bring CHERIoT-Ibex to the very high quality required for deployment into commercial products,” said Dr.

Nuvoton Develops OpenTitan® based Security Chip as Next Gen Security Solution for Chromebooks

May 30, 2024

Hsinchu, Taiwan - May 30, 2024 - Nuvoton Technology Corporation, a global leader in embedded controller and secure IC solutions, announced today that Google’s ChromeOS plans to use the first commercial chip built on the OpenTitan® open source secure silicon design as an evolution of its security chip for Chromebooks. This is a result of years of co-development and a close partnership between the companies. The new chip is based on OpenTitan, a commercial-grade open source silicon design that provides a trustworthy, transparent, and secure silicon platform.

SafetyDetectives Interview With Gavin Ferris - CEO at lowRISC

May 10, 2024

lowRISC’s CEO, Dr. Gavin Ferris, was recently interviewed by SafetyDetectives’ Shauli Zacks. The article is reproduced here by kind permission: In an exclusive interview with SafetyDetectives, Gavin Ferris, CEO of lowRISC, shares invaluable insights into the transformative world of open-source silicon. lowRISC, a trailblazer in the field, not only champions the groundbreaking OpenTitan project but also fosters a collaborative ecosystem that includes tech giants and academic luminaries. This initiative marks a significant leap toward redefining hardware security through transparency and innovation.

OpenTitan® Partnership Makes History as First Open-Source Silicon Project to Reach Commercial Availability

February 13, 2024

Definitive Project Success is Result of Five Years of Strong Collaboration and Investment by the OpenTitan Coalition to Bring First Trustworthy, Transparent, Secure Silicon Platform to Market CAMBRIDGE, England – February 13, 2024 – lowRISC C.I.C., the open silicon ecosystem organization, and the OpenTitan coalition today announced a historic milestone as the first open-source silicon project to reach commercial availability, with validated chips in hand. The capstone moment is the result of an unprecedented amount of support and investment by the nine coalition members, including Google, Winbond, Nuvoton, zeroRISC, Rivos, Western Digital, Seagate, ETH Zurich and Giesecke+Devrient, hosted by the non-profit lowRISC CIC.

Unveiling Sonata: Affordable CHERI Hardware for Embedded Systems

January 15, 2024

The lowRISC®/Sunburst team are pleased to announce that the initial Sonata prototype boards have been manufactured by our wholly owned subsidiary NewAE and are currently being tested, marking a significant milestone towards our goal of making CHERI technology widely available to embedded systems engineers. lowRISC®’s Sonata Board - powered up and running! Ibex Inside The CHERIoT Ibex core lies at the heart of the Sonata system. Ibex is a production-quality, open-source 32-bit RISC-V CPU core, written in SystemVerilog.

Sunburst Project Update

December 19, 2023

The Sunburst Project, supported by DSbD/UKRI grant (#107540), focuses on enhancing security within the embedded and operational technology (OpTe) sectors. Its primary goal is to promote the adoption of CHERIoT, an open-source microcontroller technology that integrates CHERI capabilities within the RISC-V architecture. Today lowRISC and NewAE are pleased to announce we’ve already made significant strides towards that goal, which we’ll briefly review in this blog! But first, a little history of how we got here, what CHERI is all about, and why it matters.

OpenTitan® Partnership Announces First Public Secure Execution Environment for Integrated

November 13, 2023

Open Silicon Coalition Rapidly Develops Integrated Secure Execution Environment with the Silicon Commons Ecosystem CAMBRIDGE, England and BOSTON – November 13, 2023 – lowRISC C.I.C., the open silicon ecosystem organization, and zeroRISC, the first provider of commercial cloud security services for open silicon, today announced the early release of the first SoC secure execution environment, including root of trust (RoT) functionality, as part of the OpenTitan project. This major milestone comes only six months after the tapeout of OpenTitan’s first discrete design, demonstrating significant momentum for all participating partners.

lowRISC Announces New OpenTitan Project Partner, zeroRISC

October 30, 2023

The OpenTitan coalition continues to expand as the technology approaches commercial availability CAMBRIDGE, England – October 30, 2023 – lowRISC C.I.C., the open-source silicon ecosystem organization, today announced zeroRISC has joined the OpenTitan project. zeroRISC is a startup focused on providing a cloud security service for silicon that delivers transparency and trustworthiness for data centers and ICS/OT, IoT and edge devices. The company played a key role in accomplishing the first OpenTitan tapeout and is driving efforts to validate the first discrete chip and bring the device to commercial production.

lowRISC Announces Expansion of OpenTitan Project with New Hardware

October 20, 2023

New Boards Allow Leading Developers and Organizations Globally to Contribute to the Project CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom – October 20, 2023 – lowRISC C.I.C., the open source system on chip (SoC) organization, today announced the commercial availability of two pieces of hardware crucial for research and development with OpenTitan, a project creating the world’s first open source silicon root of trust (RoT) designs. The NAE-CW310-K410T (Bergen Board) and the new, larger NAE-CW340-OTKIT (Luna Board) are now available for purchase exclusively from trusted global distributor Mouser, and addresses the overwhelming demand from OpenTitan partners, organizations and academic institutions wanting to run the full OpenTitan design — or subcomponents of that design — in a flexible FPGA-based emulation platform.

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.