In Open-Source Silicon We Trust: 'Bunnie' Huang's Baochip

Endpoint Security , Governance & Risk Management , Hardware / Chip-level Security In Open-Source Silicon We Trust: 'Bunnie' Huang's Baochip Veteran Hardware Hacker's Chip Facilitates More Trustworthy and Secure Devices Mathew J. Schwartz (euroinfosec) • April 13, 2026     Share Post Share Credit Eligible Get Permission Andrew "Bunnie" Huang, founder and CEO, Baochip How can we trust hardware to not betray us? See Also: Airlines and Airports: Visibility Across OT, IoT, and IT Veteran hardware hacker Andrew "Bunnie" Huang said answering the question of whether silicon chips are doing what they were designed to do and haven't been tampered with has historically been difficult to answer - even for high-assurance applications and embedded products used across critical infrastructure sectors. Some of this traces to the "black box" design of chips. They're rarely based on open-source designs. Many chips being physically encased in black epoxy, making it difficult to visualize and verify their contents, especially without destroying the chip. Enter the Baochip-1x, a piece of open-source silicon designed by Huang and fabricated by TSMC at 22 nanometer scale, which he's now bringing to market. "Baochip tries to make progress on that front, that foundational exercise of, 'Can we do something meaningful in terms of understanding what's inside of our hardware, and also, change the ground rules of how we engage with that?'" Huang said. He's published the code that describes the chip, known as its register-transfer level. He's also published a reference image for the chip, which shows what it should look like. The Baochip silicon facilitates visual hardware attestation, because it's been designed to be viewable using infra-red, in situ inspection of silicon, or IRIS. That means users can physically see the transistors and gain more certainty that what they're looking at is what the RTL describes, and which the vendor sent them in the first place, without having to destroy the chip in the process (see: Shine a Light: Infrared Imaging for Hardware Assurance). Baochip provides developers of embedded products running high-assurance applications with an affordable, security-focused chip that offers memory protection, a complete, Rust-based boot chain that is both open source and attestable. "Once you think about supply-chain attacks, state-level adversaries, or even just mid-level adversaries who are opening boxes, tampering with things, putting them back in the box, returning them and then you buy it, and you have a tampered product," he said. His hope: That the hardware hacking community will take his chip and run with it. Potential use cases he highlighted include building much more secure internet of things devices, as well as security tokens that can be built using trusted hardware. In this video interview with ISMG, Huang also discussed: Why every type of silicon-targeting attack can't be eliminated, but can be constrained; The ease with which large language models can be used to design and secure applications built to run on open-source silicon; His hope that the open-source Baochip will lead to a more transparent, secure and community-driven hardware ecosystem. Huang, founder and CEO of Baochip, is best known for his work hacking the Microsoft Xbox, as well as for his efforts in designing and manufacturing open-source hardware, including the chumby (app-playing alarm clock), chibitronics (peel-and-stick electronics for craft), Novena (DIY laptop) and Precursor (trustable mobile device). He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 2002. He lives in Singapore where he runs a private product design studio, Kosagi. His current research interest is in facilitating trust in technology.