System-Level Isolation for Mixed-Criticality RISC-V SoCs: A "World" Reality Check
By Luis Cunha 1, Jose Martins 2, Manuel Rodriguez 1, Tiago Gomes 1, and Sandro Pinto 1
Uwe Moslehner 3, Kai Dieffenbach 3, Glenn Farrall 3, Kajetan Nuernberger 3, Thomas Roecker 3
1 Centro ALGORITMI/LASI, Universidade do Minho,
2 OSYX Technnologies
3 Infineon AG
Abstract
As RISC-V adoption accelerates, domains such as automotive, the Internet of Things (IoT), and industrial control are attracting growing attention. These domains are subject to stringent Size, Weight, Power, and Cost (SWaP-C) constraints, which have driven a shift toward heterogeneous Systems-on-Chip (SoCs) integrating general-purpose CPUs, tightly coupled accelerators, and diverse I/O devices with different integrity levels. While such integration improves cost efficiency and performance, it introduces a fundamental safety and security challenge: enforcing system-level isolation in mixed-criticality environments. Although RISC-V International has proposed several hardware isolation primitives, including RISC-V Worlds, IOPMP, and SmMTT, their interoperability, scalability, and suitability for real-time systems remain insufficiently understood. In this paper, we present a comparative analysis of these primitives from the perspective of practical heterogeneous SoC designs. We implement an IOPMP, a World-based checker, and a modified RISC-V World checker that addresses key limitations of the baseline specification, and evaluate their trade-offs in terms of security guarantees and power-performance-area (PPA). Our results show that the World-based checker introduces a fixed, configuration-independent access latency, achieving lower worst-case delay than the evaluated alternatives while scaling predictably with system size. At the macro level, we estimate that the proposed modifications reduce SoC area by up to approximately 5% compared to a baseline design. All artifacts will be released as open source, and we expect these findings to directly contribute to the evolution and ratification of RISC-V specifications, as well as to the design of future RISC-V SoCs.
To read the full article, click here
Related Semiconductor IP
- RISC-V Debug & Trace IP
- Gen#2 of 64-bit RISC-V core with out-of-order pipeline based complex
- Compact Embedded RISC-V Processor
- Multi-core capable 64-bit RISC-V CPU with vector extensions
- 64 bit RISC-V Multicore Processor with 2048-bit VLEN and AMM
Related Articles
- Early Interactive Short Isolation for Faster SoC Verification
- Open-Source Design of Heterogeneous SoCs for AI Acceleration: the PULP Platform Experience
- Why RISC-V is a viable option for safety-critical applications
- CAST Provides a Functional Safety RISC-V Processor IP for Microchip FPGAs
Latest Articles
- System-Level Isolation for Mixed-Criticality RISC-V SoCs: A "World" Reality Check
- CVA6-CFI: A First Glance at RISC-V Control-Flow Integrity Extensions
- Crypto-RV: High-Efficiency FPGA-Based RISC-V Cryptographic Co-Processor for IoT Security
- In-Pipeline Integration of Digital In-Memory-Computing into RISC-V Vector Architecture to Accelerate Deep Learning
- QMC: Efficient SLM Edge Inference via Outlier-Aware Quantization and Emergent Memories Co-Design