UltraSoC recently announced Bare Metal Security capabilities to extend its on-chip monitoring and analytics to deliver security functionality required in a broad range of embedded products (e.g., IoT appliances and enterprise systems). Bare Metal Security features are implemented as hardware running below the operating system, so they’re nonintrusive even if the system’s conventional security measures are compromised. This adds an entirely new level of protection for the system-on-chip (SoC).
Bare Metal Security functionality uses the UltraSoC monitors to watch for unexpected behaviors such as suspicious memory accesses or processor activity, at hardware speed and nonintrusively, with minimal silicon overhead. Because it is an orthogonal on-chip hardware infrastructure independent of the main system functionality and software, there is no negative impact on system performance and it is very difficult for an attacker to subvert or tamper with. Although it functions below and outside of the operating system, the technology also provides a means of communicating with software on the device as part of a holistic security system, if this is necessary. Bare-Metal Security features also provide visibility of the whole system, making it extremely difficult to camouflage or hide an attack.
By offering resource-efficient and highly effective protection against malicious attack and malfunction, the UltraSoC on-chip analytics and monitoring system provides both development support and functionality enhancement from the same on-chip blocks. Teams already using UltraSoC to accelerate the debug, silicon validation, and bring-up process can use the same infrastructure for security processing. Designers who need Bare Metal Security features get the development benefits of a vendor-independent on-chip debug infrastructure at zero additional cost.
Although originally developed for debug and silicon validation, UltraSoC’s IP also enables a broad range of value-added functionality in-service, of which security is just one example. Other applications include in-field monitoring, performance optimization, reducing power utilization and SLA enforcement.
Source: UltraSoC Technologies
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