OpenTitan Open-Source Project Aims to Deliver
Silicon ‘Root of Trust’ Chips for Integration from the Data Center
to the Edge
Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC) today
announced that it has teamed up with lowRISC, Google and a
coalition of partners in support of OpenTitan, the first
open-source project building transparent, high-quality reference
design and integration guidelines for silicon root of trust (RoT)
chips that can be used in data storage, compute, and other hardware
platforms. Leveraging the company’s expertise in data
infrastructure and open-source technologies, Western Digital is
working with ecosystem partners to optimize the OpenTitan framework
to meet the diverse security demands of data-centric storage use
cases from the core to the edge, including machine-learning
applications, smartphones and connected Internet of Things (IoT)
devices.
The OpenTitan project was established with the belief that the
ability to understand, inspect and verify a device from the chip to
the application is critical in data security. As it’s open,
adopters of the new OpenTitan framework can now review, audit and
contribute to OpenTitan’s register-transfer level (RTL) reference
design, firmware and integration guidelines. This transparency will
help to create more secure RoT solutions and enable continued
innovation.
“As the volume and value of data continues to grow
exponentially, so does the need to keep that data safe and secure,”
said Dr. Richard New, vice president of research and development at
Western Digital. “OpenTitan leverages the power and transparency of
the open-source development model to enable root of trust chips
that can be fully inspected and verified, thereby providing strong
security against malware, physical hardware modifications and other
threats. Our work with the OpenTitan project, and ongoing
collaboration with the open-source community and security
ecosystem, furthers our commitment to accelerating the development
of more secure data infrastructure as we move into the zettabyte
era.”
As part of the company’s ongoing participation in the OpenTitan
project, Western Digital is collaborating with lowRISC, Google and
others to develop the OpenTitan RoT, including contributing to its
initial overall design, hardware block implementation and firmware.
Western Digital’s support of the project further extends the
company’s leadership in advancing open-source innovation, including
significant investments in the open-source software and hardware
ecosystem, broad participation in open industry standard security
groups, and leadership in open-source organizations.
OpenTitan Helps to Make RoT Chips More Transparent,
Trustworthy and Secure
A RoT is a function or element in a computing module that is
always trusted by the computer's operating system. It serves as the
foundational trusted element in a linked chain, in which each
element is secured by a prior trusted element. In this way, a RoT
can ensure the overall security for multiple constituent elements
in a larger complex system. Key benefits of the OpenTitan RoT
include:
- Transparency: Adopters can inspect and contribute to
OpenTitan’s design, firmware, and documentation, helping to build
more transparent, trustworthy hardware RoT chips that benefit
everyone.
- High quality: OpenTitan’s goal is to build and maintain
a high-quality and logically secure RTL design, firmware, and
documentation. The project is staffed by expert engineers focused
on rigorous design validation and technical documentation, all
based on key learnings from designing Google’s Titan chips.
- Flexible: Adopters can increase their total addressable
market and reduce costs by using a single platform-agnostic
hardware RoT design that can be integrated in data center servers,
peripherals, and any other hardware platforms.
“Customers are asked to put faith in proprietary hardware RoT
chips for their mission-critical systems without the ability to
fully understand, inspect and, therefore, trust them,” said Dominic
Rizzo, OpenTitan Lead, Google Cloud. “By creating OpenTitan with
technology leaders like Western Digital and the broader hardware
and academic community, we can leverage the experience and security
principles used to create Google’s own Titan chips to make hardware
RoT designs more transparent, inspectable, and accessible to the
rest of the industry. Security should never be built on
opacity.”
OpenTitan is managed by lowRISC, an independent not-for-profit
engineering organization that uses collaborative engineering to
develop and maintain open-source silicon designs and tools.
“At lowRISC, our mission is to establish a vibrant ecosystem
around open silicon designs and to help lower the barrier to
producing custom chips,” said Gavin Ferris, lowRISC CIC board
member. “The collaboration between lowRISC, Google, Western Digital
and the OpenTitan ecosystem of like-minded organizations focused on
the goal of improving transparency around chips helps increase
trust in the overall security of the infrastructure on which
software runs. With OpenTitan, enterprise organizations and
consumers alike will benefit from services built on a more secure
infrastructure that is anchored in transparently implemented
OpenTitan chips.”
Additional Resources
- To learn more about Western Digital’s participation in
OpenTitan and the benefits for data-centric devices, visit Dr.
New’s blog here:
https://blog.westerndigital.com/opentitan-safer-more-transparent-data-infrastructure/
- For further details on OpenTitan, visit the Google Security
Blog:
https://blog.westerndigital.com/opentitan-safer-more-transparent-data-infrastructure/
About Western Digital
Western Digital, a leader in data infrastructure, creates
environments for data to thrive. The company is driving the
innovation needed to help customers capture, preserve, access and
transform an ever-increasing diversity of data. Everywhere data
lives, from advanced data centers to mobile sensors to personal
devices, our industry-leading solutions deliver the possibilities
of data. Our data-centric solutions are marketed under the
G-Technology™, SanDisk®, WD®, and the Western Digital® brands.
Forward-Looking Statements
This news release contains forward-looking statements that
involve risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to,
statements regarding the OpenTitan framework and its benefits, our
collaborations in connection with the OpenTitan framework, business
strategies and growth opportunities, market trends, and data growth
and its drivers. Forward-looking statements should not be read as a
guarantee of future performance or results, and will not
necessarily be accurate indications of the times at, or by, which
such performance or results will be achieved, if at all.
Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties
that could cause actual performance or results to differ materially
from those expressed in or suggested by the forward-looking
statements.
Key risks and uncertainties include volatility in global
economic conditions; business conditions and growth in the storage
ecosystem; impact of competitive products and pricing; actions by
competitors; unexpected advances in competing technologies; our
development and introduction of products based on new technologies
and expansion into new data storage markets; difficulties or delays
in manufacturing; and other risks and uncertainties listed in the
company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the
“SEC”) and available on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov, including
our most recently filed periodic report, to which your attention is
directed. We do not undertake any obligation to publicly update or
revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new
information, future developments or otherwise, except as required
by law.
© 2019 Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates. All rights
reserved. Western Digital, the Western Digital logo, G-Technology,
SanDisk, and WD are registered trademarks or trademarks of Western
Digital Corporation or its affiliates in the US and/or other
countries. All other marks are the property of their respective
owners.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191105005497/en/
Laura Bakken Western Digital Media Relations 408.801.7653
laura.bakken@wdc.com
Peter Andrew Western Digital Investor Relations 949.672.9655
peter.andrew@wdc.com
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