[Cryptech Core] BA or delay?

[Randy Bush]

tl;dr: i suggest we pass on BA as we will not be ready with alpha.
please discuss, especially if you feel otherwise.

[ credit where due department: much of what follows is from sra and paul
  raising a red flag ]

there is reason to be concerned about the state of the alpha for the
planned workshop at ietf in buenos aires in early april.

pavel and fredrik have made great progress; pavel just finished the fpga
schematic and fredrik is doing the schematic merge this week.  but we do
not yet have a firm path to layout and manufacturing.  the current
thinking is, once we have a merged schematic, to ask jacob wexler (the
israeli volunteer) to help with layout with pavel and fredrik assisting.
and then we need a real bom with detailed manufacturing instructions,
need to manufacture, and go through testing.

further, having working hardware in hand is not the end game.  the alpha
has a new fpga using a different tool-chain and we have no experience
getting libhal, the hardware adaption software layer, to talk to it.
remember, js and sra have been on other projects for over two months.

so having a working alpha for buenos aires is one of those things for
which project management could do a great optimistic powerpoint success
plan; which is why we fired project management :)

we can try to do it using bridge boards; with poor fredrik building
enough of them for the workshop, and in time to go through some amount
of testing.  we would also need the programmer boards, wires, etc, but
that stuff is off the shelf.

but the bridge boards are mechanically unreliable and the workshop
environment would not be a lab bench.  if we're going to be doing a room
full of these things, we would need some days of lead time on site
before the workshop to shake the bugs out, unless we want the workshop
to devolve into hardware mucking.

so i do not see that we have enough in hand to do a great workshop at
the next ietf, the first week in april.  and the expense of getting a
team to buenos aires would not be insignificant.

alternatively, we could shoot for ripe/copenhagen in may; or more
realistically, ietf/berlin in mid july.

yes, this is disappointing.  but with the funding gap, reality is harsh.

if your mileage varies, please speak up.

randy