SeMAP—A Method to Secure the Communication in NoC-Based Many-Cores

Abstract

Systems-on-Chip (SoCs) complexity makes security a design requirement as relevant as conventional metrics such as power, performance, and area. This work targets many-core SoCs (MCSoCs) with processing elements and hardware modules interconnected through an NoC. The main attack surface in MCSoCs is resource sharing, at the processing and communication levels. This work presents SeMAP, a method to securely execute applications in MCSoCs, using a technique for spatial isolation of applications associated with a secure communication mechanism with dedicated hardware modules. DoS and spoofing attack campaigns were ineffective in attacking applications, showing that hardware-level security mechanisms effectively add security to MCSoCs.