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HPR4333: A Radically Transparent Computer Without Complex VLSI


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TITLE

A Radically Transparent Computer Without Complex VLSI

VENUE

1st IEEE Conference on Secure and Trustworthy CyberInfrastructure
for IoT and Microelectronics (SaTC 2025), Wright State University,
February 25-27, 2025.

This is a recording of the final rehearsal that occurred three
hours before this invited talk. No slides were used.

ABSTRACT

Foreign adversaries have colonized America’s computers from at
least 1986. Four decades later, online safety is the largest
failure in the history of human engineering. Radical stewardship
in cybersecurity would bring radical progress, but responsibility
for losses will need to flow from the bottom up. The buck stops
with victims, who must accept all blame for cyberattacks. Only
then will people at risk properly vet the products and vendors
they select.

A leading challenge in stewardship is balancing the opaque,
proprietary nature of VLSI complex logic with the owner’s need for
complete control. Since these aspects are incompatible and owner
control is essential, it’s necessary to design computers that
avoid complex VLSI entirely. One such architecture, Dauug | 36, is
being developed at Wright State University to deliver 36-bit
computing, preemptive multitasking, paged virtual memory, and
hundreds of opcodes, all without using a single microprocessor or
anything like one.

BIOGRAPHY

Marc Abel is an engineer-scientist specializing in technology that
supports civil rights, economic security, and geopolitical
stability. He holds a 1991 B.S. in Engineering and Applied Science
(focused on computer science) from Caltech, and a 2022 Ph.D. in
Computer Science and Engineering from Wright State University.

Marc is the sole inventor, architect, implementer, maintainer,
documenter, and promoter of the Dauug | 36 open-source
minicomputer for critical infrastructure. He is the original and
still only author of Dauug | 36’s firmware, designer and
implementer of Dauug | 36’s assembly language and assemblers,
writer of several related software tools, especially open-source
electronic design automation and simulation tools, and the sole
author of Osmin, a real-time operating system (RTOS) kernel for
the architecture. He is the writer of 200,000 words of system
documentation, including his dissertation and its online
continuation called The Dauug House.


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