MCN-1 combines a rebuildable wireless stack, owner-controlled secure boot, and an always-on hardware security core. Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.4 with no closed RF blackbox. Designed in Kansas for U.S. fabrication, packaging, testing, and secure provisioning.
Preliminary pre-silicon targets from the current MCN-1 architecture. Final specifications remain subject to physical design, verification, and production characterization.
2× RV32 at 400 MHz
Independent RISC-V application cores with bit-manipulation and scalar cryptography extensions.
Always on at 100 MHz
Isolated RISC-V security core with a 400 MHz burst mode for post-quantum operations.
Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.4 LE
Dual-band 802.11ax 1×1 on a dedicated 400 MHz open-firmware baseband core.
QFN-56, 7 × 7 mm
Wettable-flank two-die SiP target. An 8 × 8 mm LGA remains the packaging fallback.
Customer root keys
Provision your own secure-boot authority and revoke Mericron's authority over your devices.
MCN-1 is designed so customers can inspect, rebuild, modify, and flash the complete Wi-Fi and Bluetooth firmware stack. The SDK, drivers, MAC firmware, Bluetooth controller, PHY control code, calibration algorithms, secure-core runtime, and bootloader are published without opaque runtime blobs.
Customers can provision their own secure-boot authority and revoke Mericron's authority over their devices. The architecture combines secure boot, measured boot, attestation, and rollback protection without making Mericron the permanent gatekeeper for customer firmware.
A hardware and ROM enforcement layer sits below the firmware and constrains frequency, transmit power, channel configuration, DFS behavior, and other certified RF limits. This keeps customer-modifiable firmware inside the radio's approved transmission envelope.
MCN-1 is designed in Kansas around a domestic production path. The baseline plan targets GlobalFoundries Fab 8 in Malta, New York for 22FDX wafer fabrication, followed by U.S. package assembly, final test, firmware provisioning, and key custody.
Architecture, firmware, security design, and verification from Manhattan, Kansas.
GlobalFoundries Fab 8 / 22FDX is the baseline manufacturing target, not an announced contract.
U.S. packaging and test partners remain under qualification.
Each production SKU will include a supply-chain origin statement.
No catalog part combines American provenance with a radio customers can inspect, rebuild, and control.
Origin follows the chip design
ESP32 shows the problem clearly. The silicon vendor controls the design, licensed radio IP, signing hierarchy, and update path. Changing the module assembler or wafer fab does not change that.
The radio remains a black box
Western vendors ship capable parts with radio firmware that includes licensed third-party IP. They do not have the right to publish it. No amount of money can buy it open.
More parts. Same blind spot.
An MCU, radio module, and secure element cost two to four times more, take more board space, and add vendors. The radio firmware remains closed.
Make openness legal in hardware
Incumbents satisfy FCC rules by locking firmware. MCN-1 enforces the RF limits below firmware, so customers can rebuild the radio without leaving its grant. That cannot be retrofitted.
A working prototype has demonstrated the multicore trust boundaries, hybrid secure boot, measured boot, attestation, independent application domains, concurrent network paths, and RF policy authorization defined by the MCN-1 architecture.
Ed25519 and ML-DSA-87 must both verify before protected domains are released.
SHA3-384 measurements extend into PCRs and produce an inspectable attestation quote.
Security, application, and transport domains execute across separate RISC-V harts.
Independent applications and network paths operate concurrently without blocking one another.
The complete four-core digital design closes timing in the hardware prototype.
Radio activation requires RF Compliance Firewall authorization before transmission begins.
Prototype results validate the digital architecture. Integrated RF behavior, package characteristics, power, and production performance remain pre-silicon targets.
Read the preliminary architecture or tell us what you are building and where open, owner-controlled wireless fits into it.
Headline design targets from the current MCN-1 architecture. All values remain preliminary until production silicon is characterized.
