A silicon root of trust (RoT) is a foundational hardware security component embedded directly in a chip (at the silicon level).

It acts as the immutable, tamper-resistant anchor for a device’s security, verifying that the system boots into a known-good state, securely storing cryptographic keys, mediating access to firmware, and enabling features like secure boot, attestation, and encryption.

Unlike software-based security (which can be bypassed), a silicon RoT is part of the hardware itself, making it much harder for attackers to compromise.

An open source silicon root of trust takes this concept further by making the entire design hardware description (RTL), verification code, firmware, documentation, and integration guidelines publicly available under an open license.

This allows community auditing, independent verification, contributions from anyone, and avoids reliance on proprietary black-box implementations from a single vendor. The transparency reduces hidden vulnerabilities, builds broader trust, and accelerates adoption across industries (e.g., data centers, IoT, storage, peripherals, and consumer devices).

The Leading Project: OpenTitan

The primary and most prominent example is OpenTitan, explicitly described as the first open source project building a transparent, high-quality reference design and integration guidelines for silicon root of trust (RoT) chips.

• • Hosted by: lowRISC (a not-for-profit organization focused on open-source silicon).
  • Origins: Started in 2018 (inspired by Google’s internal Titan security chip), developed collaboratively with partners including Google, Nuvoton, ETH Zurich, G+D Mobile Security, Rivos, Seagate, Western Digital, Winbond, and others.
  • Goals: Create a high-quality, certifiable, vendor- and platform-agnostic RoT that is logically secure, auditable, and ready for real-world integration. It produces open IP that can be used as a standalone chip or embedded in larger SoCs.

Key technical highlights

• • Based on RISC-V (open-source instruction set architecture).
  • Available in discrete (e.g., “Earl Grey” top-level design) and integratable (e.g., “Darjeeling”) variants.
  • Includes a full security toolkit: key manager, entropy source, AES/SHA-2/HMAC accelerators, secure boot mediation, and more.
  • Actively supports post-quantum cryptography (PQC) for future-proofing against quantum attacks.
  • Permissively licensed (Apache 2.0) with complete RTL, design verification (DV), firmware, and documentation.

Current status (as of early 2026)

OpenTitan has reached production. Fabrication of commercial silicon began with Nuvoton in 2025, and it is now shipping in volume devices — including select Chromebooks (with datacenter integrations following). It is the world’s first open-source security chip in commercial products and the first commercially available open-source RoT supporting SLH-DSA-based secure boot for PQC.

Proprietary silicon RoTs (common in many chips and servers, e.g., from HPE or others) are effective but opaque — you must trust the vendor completely. OpenTitan’s open-source model enables security through transparency: the community can inspect, test, and improve the design, lowering costs, reducing vendor lock-in, and fostering innovation. It is designed for certification in cloud and IoT security use cases.

Another notable initiative is Caliptra (an open-source RoT specification from AMD, Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and others under the CHIPS Alliance), focused more on integrated RoTs for datacenter/confidential computing. However, OpenTitan remains the flagship full open-source silicon RoT project with working silicon in products.

In short, open-source silicon root of trust (exemplified by OpenTitan) represents a shift toward transparent, community-driven hardware security — making the most critical foundation of device trust auditable and accessible to all. You can explore it at opentitan.org or the GitHub repo for the full design.

TV manufacturers largely stopped producing curved screens because they turned out to be a short-lived marketing gimmick with more drawbacks than benefits for typical home use.

Curved TVs peaked around 2013–2016 (pushed heavily by Samsung and a few others), but by the early 2020s they had mostly disappeared from lineups. Today, they’re essentially extinct except for a handful of niche or legacy models — flat panels dominate for good reason.

Here are a few of the reasons why curved screens failed:

Bad for group viewing

The curve only creates an immersive, wrapped-around effect if you’re sitting dead-center and relatively close. From the sides of the couch or while moving around the room, you get distorted edges, warped images, uneven brightness, and off-color shifts. TVs are designed for families and friends watching together — curved screens make that worse, not better.

No meaningful picture-quality advantage

In real-world living rooms, the immersion benefit was barely noticeable unless you were in the sweet spot. Reviewers and consumers quickly realized flat screens delivered the same (or better) performance without the compromises.

Higher price for no extra value

Curved models cost significantly more to buy and manufacture. Flat panels are cheaper and easier to produce with consistent brightness, color, and pixel performance across the entire surface.

Practical headaches

TVs with curved screens were harder to wall-mount, more fragile, prone to exaggerated reflections and glare, and more expensive to repair.

Once the novelty wore off and sales dropped, brands shifted focus to real advancements like OLED, QLED, mini-LED, and better flat-panel tech. Curved screens simply didn’t deliver enough to justify staying in production.

(Note: Curved monitors still exist and make sense for desk use, where you sit close and centered—but that doesn’t translate well to living-room TVs.)

At the end of the day, manufacturers followed the market: consumers wanted practical, versatile TVs, not a trendy shape that only worked in ideal conditions. Flat screens won out because they’re simply better for how most people actually watch TV.