044 - Scots Army Knife

Unnamed Reverse Engineering Podcast · 3 Jan 2021 · 1h 43m

What this episode covers

Piotr Esden-Tempski of 1BitSquared discusses the company's role in manufacturing open-source hardware, specifically the Glasgow digital interface explorer, the iCEBreaker FPGA board, and the Black Magic Probe debugger. He explains the economic rationale for using an old Quad 4C pick-and-place machine for small-batch production and details how Glasgow uses an FPGA to dynamically generate hardware protocols via the nmigen HDL. The conversation also covers the geopolitical shift toward RISC-V in China, the challenges of debugging legacy industrial equipment, and the importance of documentation and community education in the open-source hardware ecosystem.

Mentioned

Companies
1BitSquared, Crowd Supply
Products
Glasgow, Black Magic Probe, iCEBreaker, Bus Pirate
Chips
RISC-V, iCE40, STM32, FTDI
Tools
Quad 4C, Neoden, nmigen, Yosys, OpenOCD

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