OpenTitan is the globally leading open-source project for secure hardware has achieved a new top-level Peppermint, which is optimized for integration within area-, cost, and power-constrained devices, including wearables, IoT endnodes, and microcontrollers. Whereas Peppermint is designed to handle secure boot and firmware update processes, including cryptographic operations, which are handled by the main SoC with minimal energy consumption. Peppermint directly benefits from recent developments in OpenTitan, including security-hardened and optimised Post-Quantum Cryptography compatible with CNSA 2.0. Design of Peppermint is also planned during H2 2026, with software and verification complete in H1 2027.
OpenTitan has already been successfully adopted in commercial applications including Chromebooks as a discrete RoT device – Earl Grey – and an integrated RoT component for server SoCs – Darjeeling. The release of Peppermint addresses the needs of other applications that require the same level of security with minimal chip size, die area (and therefore production cost), and/or power consumption. For these use cases, Peppermint delivers a tiny implementation that integrates on the SoC, remains in a low-power state most of the time, and only wakes up to handle security-related tasks.
“Security and privacy are foundational at Sesame. We’re asking people to wear our intelligent eyewear all day, and that only works if they trust it. Building in the open, with lowRISC and the OpenTitan community, means people can validate our approach for themselves.”
-Ryan Brown, Head of Hardware at Sesame AI.
“Cybersecurity is a huge concern that affects everyone, cutting across country and organisational boundaries. Open silicon is quickly becoming the security foundation for the semiconductor industry. With the release of Peppermint, OpenTitan is demonstrating its versatility to deliver a hardware security solution for multiple types of devices and use cases.”
-Javier Orensanz Marez, CEO of lowRISCtin
Founded in 2014 at the University of Cambridge, lowRISC C.I.C. is a not-for-profit company that provides a neutral home for collaborative engineering to develop and maintain open-source silicon designs and tools for the long term. The lowRISC open-source silicon ecosystem includes the OpenTitan project, the world’s most active and widely adopted open-source silicon project, containing commercial-grade IP blocks and security-certified hardware Root of Trust designs.
Sesame is building the most human interface for intelligence, brought to life through personal voice agents and optical-first eyewear designed for everyday life. Our Conversational Speech Model (CSM) enables natural, real-time conversation that understands context, nuance, and intent, while our lightweight eyewear makes that intelligence seamlessly accessible throughout the day. Founded in 2022, Sesame is an interdisciplinary team of artists and makers, led by Brendan Iribe, Ankit Kumar, Nate Mitchell, and Ryan Brown, with teams in Seattle, San Francisco, and New York City.
