Libre-Chip Awarded Grant from NLnet to Prove Lack of Spectre Vulnerabilities Without Compromising CPU Performance

[programmerjake]

Modern computers suffer from a constant stream of new speculative-execution security flaws (Spectre-style bugs). To address this major category of flaws, the Libre-chip team is working towards building a high-performance computer processor (CPU) with speculative execution and working on a mathematical proof that it doesn't suffer from any speculative-execution data leaks, thereby demonstrating that this major category of flaws can be eliminated without crippling the computer's performance.

Libre-Chip has been awarded a € 50000 grant from NLnet to build a fully Libre/Open-source initial proof-of-concept CPU as well as attempting to mathematically prove that that CPU doesn't have any speculative-execution security flaws.

Libre-Chip is a project for creating Free/Libre computer chips, such as CPUs/GPUs and their supporting software.

The Libre-chip team.

Links:

• The original grant proposal
• This grant on NLnet's website
• Our source code
• Our latest budget breakdown