CHIPS Alliance’s Caliptra Launches 2.1 RTL Release

October 15, 2025 -- As the Caliptra partners and CHIPS Alliance members Microsoft, Google, NVIDIA and AMD continue to push the boundaries of open hardware security, we’re excited to announce the Caliptra 2.1 RTL release — another important step in building a more secure and transparent silicon ecosystem. This update builds on Caliptra 2.0, delivering refined features, improved verification, and smoother integration for adopters across the industry.

The growing momentum behind Caliptra highlights the power of collaboration between the Open Compute Project (OCP) and CHIPS Alliance communities. Our shared commitment to innovation is helping shape a future where trusted hardware security is accessible, verifiable, and built on open standards.

Caliptra 2.1 integrates Adams Bridge 2.0, offering both ML-DSA and ML-KEM with side channel countermeasures. These new capabilities offer resilience now against “harvest-now, decrypt-later” attacks and against future quantum capabilities. Caliptra’s new security subsystem architecture offers a broader set of Root-of-Trust capabilities including ownership transfer for owner-endorsed code integrity, and streaming boot for resilient recovery.

OCP L.O.C.K. implementation

To strengthen data-at-rest protection across the industry, Microsoft, in collaboration with Google, Samsung, Kioxia, and Solidigm, developed OCP L.O.C.K. (Layered Open-source Cryptographic Key-management). Implemented in Caliptra 2.1, L.O.C.K provides secure and transparent key management in self-encrypting storage devices. It supports hardware-enforced key isolation, layered key hierarchies, and attested secure erase.

Meet CHIPS Alliance and Caliptra members at OCP Global Summit

If you’re at OCP Global Summit this week in San Jose, don’t miss the Caliptra sessions on Thursday, October 16. Learn more here. Or, read the Caliptra 2.1 release notes here. Be sure to stop by the CHPS Alliance kiosk on the exhibition floor (c48) shared with OpenPower and meet Rob Mains to learn more about collaborative hardware development.