TrustSoC : a heterogeneous secure-by-design SoC architecture

Since the 1970s, the complexity of systems on a chip has grown significantly. In order to improve system performance, manufacturers are integrating an increasing number of heterogeneous components on a single silicon chip. The incorporation of these components renders SoCs highly versatile yet significantly complex. Their multipurpose nature makes them suitable for use in a variety of domains, including mobile telephony, informatics, military applications, and cloud computing. SoCs process personal data (such as contacts, health information, and credit card details) and also control critical systems (such as autonomous vehicles). This raises questions about the safety of these systems. SoCs represent a significant vulnerability for attackers seeking to steal critical information or inflict damage to the system. Inadvertent vulnerabilities introduced during the design phase provide an avenue for these attacks. Such vulnerabilities frequently arise from enhancements made to boost system performance. Given that security is often an afterthought in architectural design, it is not a comprehensive solution to all potential attacks. In this talk, we will emphasize the need to reverse the historical trend of designing integrated circuits without security as a primary consideration. We will then present a heterogeneous secure-by-design SoC architecture called TrustSoC.