Jim Bell and I commented some time ago on this dilemma. One obvious solution is "table top" manufacture of VLSI.

As crazy as it sounds, for at least prototyping and small (CPunk) PoC projects, its possible to fab a wide variety of chips, with impressive feature sizes, implantation, doping, etc. using Electron Beam Lithography. EBL is basically operating an electron microscope in reverse. Because it uses electrons to illuminate the substrate vs. photons it doesn't require any litho masks. The beams can directly write to the surfaces and with the appropriate techniques expose chemicals that create the "resists" of typical litho methods. Best of all, electron beams can be brought to a sharper focus than even deep UV meaning small feature size capabilities.

The main reason EBL is only a tech oddity is its inability to be used for volume manufacture. Maybe someone in this field will do an ICO. EBL can potentially be operated by a much smaller staff (maybe a competent enough individual) than even the smallest conventional fab. With at least small scale manufacture and some careful design attention I think the list price on a rig could be < $100k USD.

Steve

On Tue, Sep 12, 2017 at 11:33 PM, grarpamp <grarpamp@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sun, Sep 10, 2017 at 1:53 AM, Ryan Carboni <ryacko@gmail.com> wrote:
> In the end, you can only trust something you can understand, otherwise you
> are trusting the word of someone else.

While ultimately true, it is certainly possible to create a far more
trustable model than the totally blind "We are the corp / gov
(or any other closed source single point opaque authority,
trade secret IPR, NDA), *You can trust us*" that idiots happily
accept today.

> the original computers used relays, switches, and wires to be programmed.

There can be parallel lines of open inspection and cross
certification of fully open ground up rebuilds all the way
to current HW and SW products... ie: Processor, OS.

The rebuild path, both of tooling itself and product, from relays
to vacuum tubes to silicon to gigagate masks is already known
form history, thus requires zero research.

The research is in how to do the rebuild under a model that
imparts explicit open reliable reviewable documented n-man
rule realtime operating and historical chain of reasonably
bulletproof trust.

#OpenFabs, #OpenHW, #OpenSW

Such a project could be seeded and continuously funded by

#CryptoCurrencies, #DAOs, #EarlyAdopters, #CypherPunks,
and eventually, sales of product runs

None of today's opaque HW gates are remotely trustworthy,
any attempts to impart trust to them are no more than foolish
speculation.



--
Creator of the Warrant Canary and the Street Performer Protocol. Wi-Fi standard spec. creation participant and co-developer of eCache. Director at MojoNation and Cylink. Founding member of IFCA and GNU Radio.

Shameless self-promoter :)