ElectronicDesign Article: Security First: Implementing Trust By Design

Earlier this year, two vulnerabilities known as Meltdown and Spectre were independently disclosed by multiple security researchers. The flaws exploited critical vulnerabilities across a wide range of modern processors, including ones from Intel, ARM, and AMD.
Increasingly, chipmakers are looking at the open-source RISC-V architecture, which was unaffected by either vulnerability, as a solution to this new class of flaws. Now special-purpose processors are being built with security in mind.
To avoid vulnerabilities such as Meltdown and Spectre, we need processors that execute sensitive cryptographic and security functions in a secure core that’s physically separated from the primary CPU. With legacy architectures like x86 and ARM subject to known—and likely also unknown–vulnerabilities, basing these security cores on RISC-V can provide a strong root-of-trust for a wide range of applications and verticals.
Secure RISC-V cores that are siloed from the primary processor can securely run sensitive code, processes, and algorithms. These cores also can utilize advanced anti-tamper features to provide the highest level of security and protection against a wide range of sophisticated attacks, including key-injection and fault-injection (glitching) attacks, as well as offering a range of integrated countermeasures against side-channel attacks, including differential power analysis (DPA) .
 
To read more, please visit: https://www.electronicdesign.com/embedded-revolution/security-first-implementing-trust-design