Introduction

Baochip-1x raises the bar on inspectable hardware, bringing you a system-on-chip (SoC) that you can check from the silicon all the way to the software. Not only is the entire bootloader open-source and NDA-free, most of the design source for the compute logic is open and NDA-free. To top it off, the chip comes in a package specifically designed to facilitate Infra-Red, In-Situ (IRIS) inspection - a non-destructive way to look at the silicon and confirm you’ve got the right chip based on the pattern of transistors printed on the silicon itself.

Security

Security Should Be For Everyone. Period Baochip-1x is positioned as a "general-purpose" microcontroller, yet it shares features normally found exclusively in NDA-only hardware secure elements: multiple cryptography accelerators, key stores, one-way counters, true random number generation, and hardware attack countermeasures such as glitch sensors and a security mesh. Great security should be standard and open. Access to top-notch hardware security shouldn’t be only for the privileged elite, the well-connected, or big corporations: it’s long overdue for everyday product specs to assume these basic primitives as building blocks, so that we can build better, more secure products as a community.

Baochip I/O (BIO) Accelerator

Can something be both secure and fun to hack? We think so. A core use case of embedded microcontrollers is interacting with real-world devices - sensors, LED strips, various bus standards. The Dabao’s Baochip-1x features the "BIO", a 700 MHz, quad-core PicoRV-powered I/O coprocessor that enables a wide range of I/O applications. Each PicoRV core in the BIO has a dedicated 4 kiB RAM for code and data, and features register-mapped GPIOs, inter-processor communication, and event handling thanks to custom hardware extensions implemented over the base RV32-EMC architecture. Not only can the BIO bit-bang an LED strip, it can also render simple animations, freeing the main CPU for other applications, or simply being shut down for power savings. I’ve really enjoyed hacking on the BIO, and I hope you do, too. The possibilities feel limitless, and if you’re a baremetal, assembly-language type of hacker, you’re going to love playing with the BIO. The BIO has a really solid "road feel" and because it’s open source, you can also check your code with RTL simulations. Unlike comparable I/O cores on other microcontrollers, the BIO is 100% open source and patent-free - so anyone can make chips using the BIO IP. You’re not locked into buying Baochip silicon; in fact we have published a demo of the BIO RTL targeting an Arty A7 FPGA board.

Trust

Open architectures mean you can own your ideas - you are empowered to build your own versions of the hardware that runs them. You don’t have to trust us to be the corporate stewards of your chips. If you’re unhappy with our direction, we encourage you to fork the code and build your own, better version! Trust It. Because You Can, Not Because You Must Baochip changes the status quo by making evidence-based trust a core principle of its design. You, the user, will have reasons to trust the Dabao’s Baochip-1x CPU based on scientific evidence that is observable without access to a million-dollar microscope. See the actual transistors inside Baochip using a technique called IRIS: all you need is a slightly modified CMOS microscope camera and LED illuminator. Learn more about IRIS and how to modify a camera. In addition to being able to see the physical transistors, you can inspect the logical design behind the active compute portions of the chip by browsing the RTL in the Baochip-1x GitHub repository. And of course, all of the code that comes on the chip in the form of its bootloader and OS is 100% open source and inspectable. Extra attention was given to the bootloader to ensure that anyone can reproduce the actual binary image using a GUIX toolchain. Thanks to this design principle, Baochip-1x is well-suited as a hardware development framework for security-critical applications such as password managers, authenticators, and other high-assurance applications — or just bringing security to your everyday IoT project!

Comparisons

Features & Specifications

Baochip-1x mostly-open RTL SoC
350 MHz Vexriscv RV32-IMAC CPU core with MMU
4x 700MHz PicoRV RV32-EMC CPU cores with BIO register extensions
4MiB of fast on-chip RRAM
2MiB of on-chip SRAM + 256k of I/O SRAM
Cryptographic accelerators
Physical attack hardening countermeasures
On-chip ring oscillator-based TRNG
Fully open source & reproducible bootloader
Rust-based Xous OS featuring virtual memory for process isolation
USB high speed device via USB type C connector
IRIS inspectable
Dabao evaluation board
20 pinned out I/Os
2-layer board, optimized for accessible pricing
Interactive pinout
Support & Documentation
Discord
Blueksy
Baochip-1x source
Dabao KiCad
Programmer's guide to the Core complex and the peripherals
Xous, the official Rust-based operating system for Dabao
39c3 talk on Xous