Formally Verifying Processor Security
November 20, 2019
Intel has had a couple of major events that totally changed their attitude to verification. The first was in 1994 when they had the Pentium floating-point divide bug and management said “don’t ever let this happen again”. In 1996, they started proving properties of the Pentium processor FPU.
Then, a couple of years ago, the side-channel vulnerabilities like Spectre were discovered. These didn't just affect Intel, it turned out every modern CPU had the same problem hiding in plain view for 20 years. Basically, the vulnerability plays on speculative execution making memory references and then being able to discover which memory elements were accessed, even though the speculative execution got abandoned.
To read the full article, click here
Related Semiconductor IP
- DSP-Based 112G SerDes
- XTAL oscillator in TSMC-7nm
- GPU
- V-by-One Verification IP
- AI model compression IP
Related Blogs
- Verifying Processor Security, Part 2
- Formally verifying protocols
- Formally verifying AVX2 rejection sampling for ML-KEM
- what made Apple design the A4 processor?
Latest Blogs
- Embedded Security explained: Secure boot for embedded systems
- World's First Standards-Compliant 112G PHY IP for Linear Optics: A Turning Point for AI Interconnects
- One Key for Every Door: How Aliro Extends the UWB Digital Key Beyond the Car
- Reprogrammable Post-Quantum Security for SoCs: Why Crypto-Agility Matters
- Designing the Beam Steering Core for a C-Band AESA: A Look at VSI's VBF0644 GaAs Beamformer IC