Comment by sockbot
16 hours ago
For those unfamiliar with this project:
Baochip is a license-free RISCV implementation with MMU. It is custom CPU logic hitchhiked on another company's SOC. The SOC is dual CPU like the rp2340, but with the other CPU fused off.
Xous is a an operating system that runs on the Baochip and an FPGA version of it.
Precursor is a prototype mobile hardware secrets device. It has an FPGA that runs Xous and costs around $600. One of the core goals of the project is to make inspectable hardware.
This baochip is the next step is to make prototype devices cheaper by running xous on the baochip instead of FPGA. The baochip is inspectable using a technique called IRIS.
Bunnie is leading this project.
His talk at Teardown last year was excellent; I’m glad to see development is still going strong.
Is the case that captures all RF still planned for the productised Baochip?
Almost. SoC is a 1+4 design, with a vexriscv main core (350MHz), and 4 tiny "Baochip IO" PicoRV cores (700MHz) (somewhat akin to the ultra-puny Programmable IO/PIO cores on rp2350). The crowdsupply for this board just opened. For on vexriscv, which has been around: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46619059 (183 points, 69 comments, nice)
I want Oxide to start an RFD for evaluate changing their base processor to this ("Gimlet"). Much higher security than anything else available. Switching off Hubris is probably a non-starter, it probably lacks some nice/necessary peripherals, and major supply chain risk, but also, an incredible open source chip you could go deeper on.