Google announces OpenTitan, a new project to create open source chip designs
1 min read . Updated: 05 Nov 2019, 09:17 PM IST
Premium- According to Google, OpenTitan is going to be run by a non-profit community called LowRisc'
- OpenTitan will be platform-agnostic and adaptable for any software or device
In yet another effort towards improving data center technologies, Google today announced a new project called OpenTitan. “OpenTitan will deliver a high quality RoT (root of trust) design and integration guidelines for use in data center servers, storage, peripherals, and more," the company said in a press release. Root of Trust is a piece of code that can be always be trusted within a cryptographic system.
The project, as the name suggests, is built off Google’s Titan chip, which itself is a RoT chip for data centers. Essentially, the goal of the project is to build dependable chip designs for datacenters, storage and peripherals that can be checked by anyone for backdoors and vulnerabilities.
“OpenTitan’s aim is to build and maintain a high-quality logically-secure silicon design, including reference firmware, verification collateral, and technical documentation," the company wrote on OpenTitan’s website.
According to Google, OpenTitan is going to be run by a non-profit community called LowRisc. It is partnering with ETC Zurich, Nuvoton Technology, G+D Mobile Security and Western Digital for the project.
The company also said that OpenTitan will be platform-agnostic and adaptable for any software or device.
Google’s effort seems very similar to the other project the company is involved in, called Open Compute. Google, Facebook and Intel came together to create that project which also works on creating open source chip designs for infrastructure servers.
