Architectural Frameworks for Security and Reliability of MPSoCs

Multiprocessor system-on-chip (MPSoC) architectures are increasingly used in modern embedded systems. MPSoCs are used for confidential and critical applications and hence need strong security and reliability features. Software attacks exploit vulnerabilities in the software on MPSoCs. In this paper we propose two MPSoC architectural frameworks, tCUFFS and iCUFFS, for an Application Specific Instruction set Processor (ASIP) design. Both tCUFFS and iCUFFS employ a dedicated security processor for detecting software attacks. iCUFFS relies on the exact number of instructions in the basic block to determine an attack and tCUFFS relies on time-frame based measures. In addition to software attacks, reliability concerns of bit flip errors in the control flow instructions (CFIs) are also addressed. Additional method is proposed to the iCUFFS framework to ensure reliable inter-processor communication. The results for the implementation on Xtensa processor from Tensilica showed, worst case runtime penalty of 38% for tCUFFS and 44% for iCUFFS, and worst case area overhead of 33% for tCUFFS and 40% for iCUFFS. The existing iCUFFS framework was able to detect approximately 70% of bit flip errors in the CFIs. The modified iCUFFS framework proposed for reliable inter-processor communication was at most 4% slower than the existing iCUFFS framework.