Dabao board features open-source hardware Baochip-1x RISC-V MCU (Crowdfunding)

An open-source hardware board usually features a closed-source microcontroller or processors, but the Dabao evaluation board goes further with the open-source Boachip-1x MCU, whose RTL files are available. It’s also manufactured in such a way that it is inspectable with the Infra-Red, In Situ (IRIS) technique, so users can look at the silicon and confirm they’ve got the right chip in a non-destructive way.

Baochip-1x is a “general-purpose” microcontroller with a 350 MHz Vexriscv RV32-IMAC CPU core, a BIO accelerator for I/Os with four  700MHz PicoRV RV32-EMC CPU cores, 4MB of ReRAM, 2MB SRAM, a USB interface, various other I/Os, and hardware secure elements such as cryptography accelerators, key stores, one-way counters, true random number generation, and hardware attack countermeasures such as glitch sensors and a security mesh. The Dabao board itself is pretty basic with the microcontroller, two 16-pin headers for I/Os, a USB-C port for power and programming, and Reset and Prog buttons.

Dabao board specifications:

• SoC – Baochip-1x (Mostly-open RTL SoC)
  • CPU – 350 MHz Vexriscv RV32-IMAC CPU core with MMU
  • Co-processor – 4x 700MHz PicoRV RV32-EMC CPU cores with BIO register extensions
  • Memory
    • 2MiB of on-chip SRAM + 256k of I/O SRAM
    • 4MiB of fast on-chip ReRAM
  • Hardware security
    • Signed boot
    • On-chip ring oscillator-based TRNG
    • Key store
    • One-way counters
    • HW accels: RSA, ECC, ECDSA, X25519, SHA256/512, SHA3, Blake2/3, AES
    • Secure mesh, glitch sensors, ECC-protected RAM
• USB – 1x USB high-speed Type-C port
• Expansion – 2x 16-pin headers for 20x I/Os (GPIO, PWM, SPI, UART, I2C …)
• Misc – IRIS (Infra-Red, In Situ) inspectable
• Power Supply – 5V via USB-C port
• Dimensions – 41 x 21 mm

Almost everything is open-source. You’ll find the SystemVerilog and Verilog code for the chip on GitHub, the KiCAD files for the Dabao board in another repository, and the source code for the bootloader and Rust-based Xous OS featuring virtual memory for process isolation can be found on betrusted.io.

Since the chip is open-source and can easily be inspected at home with a slightly modified CMOS microscope camera and LED illuminator, the Baochip-1x is well-suited for security-focused applications such as password managers, authenticators, and other high-assurance applications. No other popular boards, including the Raspberry Pi Pico 2, Espressif Systems ESP32-DevKitC, Teensy 4.1, BBC Micro:bit v2, and Arduino Nano 33 IoT, among others, come with an open-source RTL chip and are IRIS inspectable. Most don’t come with an open bootloader either, and the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 is an exception here.

Baochip has just launched the Dabao board on Crowd Supply with a symbolic $1 funding target. Rewards start at $9.50 for the Dabao Evaluation Board for Baochip-1x, but companies or individuals who want to further support the project can also get a full reel of 100 boards for $899. Shipping adds $10 to the US and $18 to the rest of the world, except for the reel reward, whose shipping is free within the US. Deliveries are scheduled to start by the end of June 2026.

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