[$] Is it time for open processors?

The disclosure of the Meltdown and Spectrevulnerabilities has brought anew level of attention to the security bugs that can lurk at the hardwarelevel. Massive amounts of work have gone into improving the (still poor)security of our software, but all of that is in vain if the hardware givesaway the game. The CPUs that we run in our systems are highly proprietaryand have been shown to contain unpleasant surprises (the Intel managementengine, for example). It is thus natural to wonder whether it is time tomake a move to open-source hardware, much like we have done with oursoftware. Such a move may well be possible, and it would certainly offersome benefits, but it would be no panacea.