[Cryptech Core] conversation with bitsim

[Fredrik Thulin]

On Tuesday, June 09, 2015 02:27:52 PM Leif Johansson wrote:
...
> I was quite open about the fact that several in the project had
> expressed the belief that with the M4, we could produce schema with
> our current resources.
> 
> So the question is this: should we pay bitsim (a couple of 10s of kSEK
> probably) to work up a better estimate or should we keep this option
> in reserve for later?

Because of the ongoing business discussions with Bitsim, we've had some 
conversations about this off-list - apologies for that. Now that you've talked 
with Bitsim I want to re-capitulate those discussions on the list quickly:

Pavel, Joachim and I think we can actually make the schematics for the Alpha 
ourselves, after the move to the ARM M4.

We said in Stockholm that I would make a small "bridge board" to connect one 
of the M4 mcu:s to the FPGA on the Novena, for FMC interface development. 
Pavel made the suggestion that once we have that board, he can add an Artix-7 
FPGA (with required power etc.) to the schematics and then we can get a PCB 
layout made from these schematics.

I think we should make sure to keep a good relationship with Bitsim for the 
future, but if we choose to make an attempt at making the schematics ourselves 
I do not think we need a better estimate from them at this time.

/Fredrik