Are CPUs and chips a hardware freedom issue? (sas Re: FSF continuously harms Free Hardware)

[Jacob Hrbek]

Can someone elaborate why are we concerned about CPUs in terms of 
hardware freedom?

My argument is that those are non-issue in terms of hardware and 
software freedom as you can _make_ CPU and chips through using RISC-V or 
RISC/POWER9, MIPS architecture if you have the relevant infrastructure 
and knowledge for it or to outsource the production and implement your 
own Quality Assurance to mitigate the risk of supply chain attack

_or_

You can use chips like rockchip, run an x-ray scan to see how it is 
wired together or if x-ray is not conclusive enough then put it on a CNC 
machine with a drill and remove layer by layer while making a 
high-definition picture of each layer cut to then construct a 3D 
representation of the construction to know _exactly_ how the chip works 
_and_ in terms of rockchip they provide all required tools to inspect 
the chip through software, their microcode and bootloader and maintain 
patches for linux to make sure it works.

In addition FPGAs are a thing and we have user-friendly and programmable 
chips like arduino released under GPLv3-compatible license including the 
hardware files so worst case scenario in majority of the cases is 
writting arduino code and using that until you can figure out better 
implementation.

So can anyone dispute that CPUs and chips are a hardware freedom issue 
and elaborate exactly why or can we all agree that those are not a 
problem to move forward?

On 1/27/22 09:33, Adrien Bourmault via libreplanet-discuss wrote:
> Le 27 janvier 2022 05:13:09 GMT+01:00, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> a écrit :
> > [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> > [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> > [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
> >
> >   > https://www.wired.com/story/22-year-old-builds-chips-parents-garage/
> >
> > He has made a chip with 1400 transistors.  I think that
> > making a processor capable of running GNU/Linux like the 15-year-old
> > processor in my T400s will take at least another decade, and probably
> > two or three.
> >
> > I'm sure people will get there someday.  But RYF's policies should
> > be designed for the next few years, not for long-term policies.
> > We can't push long-term policies, we can only encourage them.
> >
> >
> > --
> > Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
> > Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
> > Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
> > Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > libreplanet-discuss mailing list
> > libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
> > https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
> Hello to all. I add my little stone to this discussion to say first that I 
> agree with Richard that today we cannot yet say no to non-free hardware as we 
> do with software, and that we cannot push such pre-requisites into RYF.
>
> What I have to add is mostly on the subject of processors, since we are talking 
> about someone who has designed his own CPU.
> Some of you know that I'm a student in France in a master's degree in processor 
> architecture. My laboratory, the LIP6, has been trying for a few years to focus 
> on VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) design methods to design free hardware.
>
> Thus, our university has created a complete VLSI chain as free software. It is 
> called Coriolis and allows the design of an ASIC from its VHDL description to 
> the drawing of the masks (see https://coriolis.lip6.fr)
>
> Moreover, to design elements more quickly, component libraries are needed (to 
> avoid reinventing the wheel). Especially for analog circuits. Our laboratory 
> has therefore created the OCEANE library (sorry link in French, nobody has 
> translated it yet https://www-soc.lip6.fr/equipe-cian/logiciels/oceane/).
>
> Finally, so that the masks produced by these methods can be transformed into 
> real hardware, we had to find a foundry that would give us its PDK (all the 
> information to correctly size the masks and adapt them to specific 
> technologies). Unfortunately most foundries keep these parameters a secret. But 
> recently, SkyWater foundry released their PDK. It is a technology with a fine 
> 130nm etch. It's not state of the art, but it's enough to do something useful. 
> You can find it here:
> https://skywater-pdk.readthedocs.io/en/main/
>
> Thanks to this, at LIP6 (which belongs to Sorbonne University) we are now able 
> to implement processors respecting the ARM v2 specification freely. A work on 
> RISC V is in progress this year.
> --
> Adrien Bourmault
>
> Trésorier de l'Association Libre en Communs,
> Associate member, Free Software Foundation
> GPG: aad6b069819e6979
> -
> Defend Richard M. Stallman ! 
> <https://stallmansupport.org/>_______________________________________________
> libreplanet-discuss mailing list
> libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
> https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss

--
Jacob Hrbek

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