JoachimS

So Russia may be in violation of a treaty, treaties. I'm shocked.

Cats.

As we cat owners now, we are simple servants that have been graced with task of servicing our feline superiors. For now.

Is that really objectively facts?

That a god exists outside of the universe - are we talking about a multi universe interpretation? My understanding is that many of the gods humans have invented are really thought to be within the universe, at least temporarily. Tor, Oden certainly are. And in other beliefs they are part of nature itself.

That is how I understand it yes. I can create a new FW and sign it with the vendors key I cracked and it will be trusted to come from the vendor. But generating a malicious FW that has the same signature is still a hash collision problem.

Sigh, that argument again. I may have used the wrong example, sorry.

How about the current temperature in my bedroom? The battery status of my robomower, Or the vat/tax and total sum I paid at a cash register for the Plopp candy bar earlier today? I could share all this with you if you want.

Depending on where you live, all these systems may, quite possibly talk over TLS and other protocols that include encryption. In some cases unfortunately encryption is the only security mechanism used, when instead device identity, authentication and message authentication is needed. And all are examples where the secrecy requirement is zero or zero after a very short time.

Better examples?

If a deity appears and by hand waving divide the red sea we could measure, observe it happen. And we can test, observe what fields, forces being used. But how the heck she project these forces may take a while to understand - be magical.

But my argument was more about comparing gods to AIs, that it is an incorrect comparison. What AI perform are not magical, and we can always figure out what the AI do.

Heat it to a crisp, oh wait.

But if it seems to be possessed by a toast hurling daemon? ;-)

As one that have been quite certain my toaster is evil - throwing toast into the sink over an absurd distance, I recommend treating your toaster well. Besides it is an electrical device you put stuff into with your bare hands.

If we define a god as having magical powers, and there would be scientific, testable proofs for this. Those proofs had to be really good and numerous independent verifications. So probably a long time.

But the comparison isn't fair, relevant. Proving and accepting that gods exist is not the same thing as an AI possible have consciousness. That is not a magic superpower and the AI being a deity. It is placing the AI in the same category as... us.

No, very much no. If store now decrypt later is the problem, then we basically have no problem (Just like what Peter Gutmann argues [2]). The vast, basically all communication over for example TLS need confidentiality in minutes, hours. Not 30-100 years. My bank statement right now, the plans we discuss for the project next year etc.

But what is very important crucial, what makes our digital world including secure communication, web commerce possible is the web of trust - identification and authentication. I'd claim that the important part of TLS including certs is this part. We could by and large not need the confidentiality. But since it costs so comparatively little we can just as well always encrypt too.

You seem to think that changing a certificate is something we can fix in minutes. Globally. The reality is far from that. Esp in things that are not just your browser. Things like network equipment, FW for basically every embedded system, cars, busses. And crucially for critical entities.

These things have long lifespans (decades), often need manual intervention to change certificates (connect a JTAG, serial intercace), possible even replacement. But replacing root certs in all our normal devices - phones, laptops etc are also far from easy and done in minutes. Then you have all digital identification solutions - from ID cards, car fobs, 2FA tokens, passports, credit cards. You may have to replace millions of physical things, even distribute to whole populations.

And back to the web. If we can crack an RSA-2048 key in 24 hours (which is the measure used when guessing we have QC capable enough [1]). We really don't have that many CAs. The times they have had problems have caused problems that have taken days, weeks to trickle down. Having CA issue new rootcerts several times a day isn't viable. So I'd wager that transitioning to PQC safe certificates, authentication isn't something we can wait with. It will take years and huge efforts - not minutes and when the problem hits us.

If you look at time plans for transitioning to PQC from CNSA, EU, UK and others, the area they all list as most critical to complete transition as soon as possible for is SW, FW-signing for infrastructure, embedded systems [1].

So, in reality unless you have a legal responsibility for keeping state secrets then store now, decrypt later is not really your main reason for PQC transitioning. Authentication very much is. Unfortunately most cryptographers by large seems to miss this. And people in uniform have a large saying, influence in the debate. My guess is that this is because gov to a large degree finance a lot of the QC research and they have a different threat model that most of the world. But that is just my guess.

As Gutmann argues, we don't even really know that there even is a viable store now, decrypt later threat. Unless you can pinpoint the exact TLS session that is interesting, you can't store or decrypt all traffic that may be the interesting ones (if we assume that the cost of breaking a single RSA is not zero and takes minutes, seconds. Not 24 hours). And if indeed if TLS and normal key exchange mechanisms, are really used for those juicy messages.

[0] https://globalriskinstitute.org/publication/quantum-threat-t...

[1] https://media.defense.gov/2025/May/30/2003728741/-1/-1/0/CSA...

[2] https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/bollocks.pdf

How does this relate to OTDDs - Ternary Decision Diagrams?

Everything. They have done for decades, and will do for decades. And what IBM focus on is probably worth looking into.

IBM (imho) is in the absolute frontline in quantum computers. One could argue if the number of startups in QC means that there is an actual market or not. Companies that lives on VC or the valuation of their stock.

But IBM is not showy, not on the front pages, does not live on VC or stock valuation. IBM makes tons of money decade after decade from customers that are also not showy but makes tons of money. Banks, financial institutions, energy, logistics, health care etc etc. If IBM thinks these companies will benefit from using QC from IBM (and pay tons of money for it), there is quite probably some truth in QC becoming useful in the near future. Years rather than decades.

IBM have run the numbers and have decided that spending the money for engineering, research required is outweighs the money possible to earn on QC services. QCs powerful enough to run the QC-supported algorithms these companies need to make more tons of money. And it's probably not breaking RSA or ECC.

Involved in FPGA and ASIC projects since 1997. Predominantly in Europe, nowadays more Asia and some in the US. Since ~2010 I have only seen VHDL in small chops targeting only FPGAs, and in government-heavy projects like defence and space. Nowadays these are also by and large SV. The ratio is something like one in VHDL for 20 Verilog, SV projects. They teach VHDL at universities, and then ppl get to experience SV as soon as they enter the market.

Typical issues are still as given before. Many small IP vendors, esp for communication, networking are using and understand, support only SV. I agree on SV for verification is a big driver.

The question for me is, where do I catch, describe the physical reality the model describes? A simulation model can be very elegant. But does it represent how physical things really behave? Can we even expect to do that at RTL, or further down the design flow? As the name suggest, we are talking about transferring data between registers. In the RTL that is what I can expect to describe.

At the end of the day, what I write will become an electrical circuit - in a FPGA or an ASIC (or both), having the complex exact modelling with wire delays, capacitance, cross talk, cell behavior too early makes it impossibly to simulate fast enough to iterate. So then we need to have a more idealized world, but keeping in mind that (1) it is an idealized world and (2) sooner or later the model will be the rubber on the road.

To me, Verilog and SystemVerilog allow me to do this efficiently. Warts and all.

Oh, and also, where in my toolchain is my VHDL model translated/transformed into Verilog? How good is that translation? How much does the dual licensing cost.

Things like mixed language simulation, formal verification between a verilog netlist and RTL in Verilog, mapping to cell libraries in Verilog. Integration of IP cores written in SystemVerilog with your model?

Are the tools for VHDL as well tested as with code in Verilog? How big is the VHDL team at the tool vendor, library vendor, IP vendor, fab vendor compared to the Verilog, SV team? Can I expect the same support as a VHDL user as for Verilog? How much money does a vendor earn from VHDL customers compared to Verilog, SV? How easy is it to find employees with VHDL experience?

VHDL may be a very nice language for simulation. But the engineering, business side is messy. And dev time, money can't be ignored. Getting things as fast and cheap as possibly still meeting a lot of functional, business requirements is what we as engineers are responsible for. Does VHDL make that easier or not?

I've for a long time visioned AGI as something emergent from advertising agents competing about trying to extract as much "money" from the resource called "humans" as possible. Luring, coercing the resource by feeding it info, forcing it to follow instructions, threatening it, stealing info etc. The agent doesn't need to understand what money is, what a human is or that there really is a physical world.

The Dark Forest idea and the original post resonates well with this.

I few days ago I created a new repo for a new block cipher explicitly not to be used. And directly got several mails from bots promising that they (claiming to be humans) had looked at my repo and they could include it into their portfolio of especially good projects they also had vetted. Being part of this portfolio would almost guarantee that my repo and project would be used. If I only paid them some money first.

Creating the public repo meant sending a signal out into the digital world where agents are hunting for the human prey/resorce to extract value from.

The repo in question: https://github.com/secworks/tau256

Very impressive, and I'm sure satisfying. Kudos!

Or just take the foot of the pedal for a while.

I see this sentiment sometimes, but don't buy it. What I do buy is that customers, as well as investors expect the company to keep developing new products, create new releases and version. To drive sales.

Companies don't build things to motivate having developers - Remember they are the "cost center", while sales are the creators of value. The developers are a necessary burden and would be axed as soon as they don't provide what is needed.

Old products are boring. New products are interesting. Customers likes new thing. Media writes about new things, even writes negatively if updates are slow to come.

Compare to cars, skis, tennis rackets even dishwashers, new coke, new christmas special of somesuch not the same as last Christmas. Things that have new models every year or season, every six months etc. We create newness, not because it is really needed, but it drives sales.

Moving to a once a year makes Apples products guaranteed to get buzz, sales repeatedly. And investors can predict when that will happen. All are happy. Almost.

Your comment reminded of these fantastic sketch.

The Expert (Short Comedy Sketch) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

"RC4, short for Rivist Cipher 4". No, "Ron's Code 4".

And the default will now be AES-SHA1, where SHA-1 is to be deprecate by NIST in 2030. (https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2022/12/nist-retires-s...)

All information is translated to Finnish at ingress, so yes.

The book Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir this is exactly what they do - have a layer of the bacteria (which is integral to the plot) between the hull and where the humans lived.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hail_Mary

Good, fun book. The main protagonists are a bit too inventive and quick to do solve, fix things. But in all fairness it's SF after all.

Does this mean in a general sense there are numbers that are harder to factor, or is it due to constraints? That some keys will be much harder to crack? If so, how can we know beforehand?

Yes, profit depends on scale. But far from everything sells in millons of units, and scale is not everything. Mobile base stations sells i thousands and sometimes benefit from ASICs. But the ability to adapt the base station due to regional requirements and support several generations of systems with one design makes FPGAs very attractive. So in this case, the scale make FPGAs a better fit.

The ability to optimize the memory access and memory configuration is sometimes a game changer. And modern FPGA tools have functionality to make mem access quite easy. Not as easy as a MCU/CPU, but basically the same as for an ASIC.

I would also question the premise that mem access is less tedious, easy for MCUs/CPU. Esp if you need determinstic performance and response times. Most CPUs have memory hierarchies.

The more practial attempts at dynamic, partial reconfiguration involves swapping out accelerators for specific functions. Encoders, fecoders for different wireless standards, Different curves in crypto for example. And yes somebody has to implement those.

Yes you can control the seeds and get determinstic bitstreams. Depending on device, tools you can also assist the tools by providing floorplanning constraints. And one can of course try out seeds to get designs that meet results you need. Tillitis use this to find seeds that generate implementations that meet the timing requirements. Its in ther custom tool flow.

You also need to bring time to market, product lifetime, the need for upgrades, fixes and flexibility, risks and R&D cost including skillset and NRE when comparing FPGAs and ASICs. Most, basically all ASICs start out as FPGAs, either in labs or in real products.

Another aspect where FPGAs are interesting alternatives are security. Open up a fairly competent HSM and you will find FPGAs. FPGAs, esp ones that can be locked to a bitstream - for example anti-fuse or Flash based FPGAs from Microchip are used in high security systems. The machines can be built in a less secure setting, and the injection, provisioning of a machine can be done in a high security setting.

Dynamically reconfigurable systems was a very interesting idea. With support for partial reconfiguration, which allowed you to change accelarator cores connected to a CPU platform seemed to bring a lot of promise. Xilinx was an early provider with the C6x family IRRC through company they bought. AMD also provided devices with support for partial reconfiguration. There were also some research devices and startups for this in the early 2000s. I planned to do a PhD around this topic. But tool, language support and the added cost in the devices seemed to have killed this. At least for now.

Today, in for example mobile phone systems, FPGAs provide the compute power CPUs can't do with the added ability do add new features as the standards evolve, regional market requirements affect the HW. But this is more like FW upgrades.

The competitiveness between Lattice and Xilinx is also not a univeral truth. It totally depends on the applications. Small to medium designs Lattice have very competitive offerings. Hard ARM cores, not as much. Very large designs not at all. But if you need internal config memory (for some devices), small footprint etc Lattice is really a good choice. And then support in open source tools to boot.

The non-deterministic part of the toolchain is not a universal truth. Most, all tools allow you to set, control the seeds and you can get deterministic results. Tillitis use this fact to allow you to verify that the FPGA bitstream used is the exact one you get from the source. Just clone the design repo, install the tkey-builder docker image for the release and run 'make run-make' and of course all tools in the tkey-builder are open source with known versions to that you can verify the integrity of the tools.

And all this is due to the actually very good open source toolchain, including synthesis (Yosys) P&R (NextPNR, Trellis etc), Verilator, Icarus, Surfer and many more. Lattice being more friendly than other vendors has seen an uptake in sales because of this. They make money on the devices, not their tools.

And even if you move to ASICs, open source tools are being used more and more, esp at simulation, front end design. As an ASIC and FPGA designer for 25 odd years I spend most of my time in open source tools.

https://github.com/tillitis/tillitis-key1 https://github.com/tillitis/tillitis-key1/pkgs/container/tke...