[Cryptech Tech] Alpha board strategy

[Warren Kumari]

On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 2:42 AM, Joachim Strömbergson
<joachim at secworks.se> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
>
> Aloha!
>
> Шатов Павел wrote:
>>> And just to make it easier for others to replicate what we do in
>>> order to build trust or try to contribute the tool becomes a
>>> problem if the cost serious dough.
>> Both ISE and Quartus are $2,995.
>
> Depends if you go node locked or not. Node locked Quartus is 1995 USD
> and floating is 3995 USD. And that is fairly serious dough if you are
> not planning to do a single board or so.
>
>
>> I mean that if we choose Altera's devices, we can develop Alpha Board
>> in such a way, that it will accept both A7 (largest device that is
>> available with free license) and A9 (largest available device). End
>> users can decide on their own what chip to solder.
>

So, how far can a floating license float? I find their licensing
information page unhelpful and was not able to find much detail, but I
*think* we could buy the primary verilog developers their own licenses
and then one or two floating seats, setup a license server and have
people who actually need to use a floating license VPN into a network
with the FLEXlm license server.
I don't know how many people would need to use the software *at the
same time*, but this might allow people who need to build on e.g A9
but do not have their own software to do so.

This may be a bad idea, the VPN idea might not work, their license
terms (which I couldn't find) may disallow this, etc but I figured
worth mentioning it.

W

> Yes, in-family pin compatibility is one of the good things with FPGAs.
> And that it also often scales downwards (depending on which device in
> the family you start out with.) If one has a use case that needs less
> resources one can do cost reduction fairly easily.
>
>
>> My suggestion is to have one board that will suit users willing to
>> use cheap FPGA and free license as well as users willing to use
>> larger FPGA and paid subscription license.
>
> Yes, that is a very good point. But it doesn't change the fact that we
> imho want to be able to meet the full set of functionality for our
> primary use cases with a lot of possible headroom for the first version
> of the board. Adding a second set of pads and traces for a second FPGA
> on the first alpha board (and possibly keeping it on later revisions) is
> a cheap way to do that. A way to support building big designs without
> the cost of the tools.
>
> - --
> Med vänlig hälsning, Yours
>
> Joachim Strömbergson - Alltid i harmonisk svängning.
> ========================================================================
>  Joachim Strömbergson          Secworks AB          joachim at secworks.se
> ========================================================================
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2
> Comment: GPGTools - http://gpgtools.org
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/
>
> iQIcBAEBCAAGBQJU5ZPyAAoJEF3cfFQkIuyNfnQP/iq+NnnCKqcQlOQji2vFxe28
> bICI248h5lz4kU9F4JCo51HyGC/vQH6XpKfq0uRbgew9VXXGQNNn/RkguOYb4dlj
> H5k49lBL6V9N505xE0LXAflE7Fval9m2oNLHgg4F5HoT+cg8/xQyMvnFqNjf6j9d
> MofvheQu5PB5zE+hkL6tP+6ZUuGRhwCGiXwVvIdbQH02alhNC3zn7L6UNwSkYbA9
> r6BySnUroyr0rWvImeM8+b0kdwu2oQol/DT5+Ij52QsjukUaqhzIAt3T3Fhpp/Ft
> /iektFPDtlxznqbHFftZxufOs7JCHoHXiQp+R51srLsHBcgCeSKJwOeLXe+Jbiub
> 6ECwgioTdNN0jtvgHF1oB74aumMRgmWD1GBce5RHTPJelg4RRwQGLoVYez3TZh1V
> BEqR5e/bcmsXKgTqrsCzPOZ9c0zXz3irqW0xhAIjnVxWsFLNhxJhFkzrieJysGd5
> 2iTT2WQuKrgq1xdmcA93ssCmDCYRQqbkfKoJMaD+D34QRXt59+QYBE7Q7IG0jSjm
> Yp7bQPuy660mXxgdQl898115d/R7qfgJ2jVPVyPagO7GMQcBIKRQMKCOB6gifKvs
> +Yea2D20Jli2YxDSL5EhEzn8/FJVnGWGiJK2w9/e5jbrgs1N6okEhe3Fg8t+u6l+
> PkYp4Ixwxmir80jYWjwT
> =1zKl
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> Tech mailing list
> Tech at cryptech.is
> https://lists.cryptech.is/listinfo/tech



-- 
I don't think the execution is relevant when it was obviously a bad
idea in the first place.
This is like putting rabid weasels in your pants, and later expressing
regret at having chosen those particular rabid weasels and that pair
of pants.
   ---maf