[Cryptech Tech] goals / use cases

Ben Laurie benl at google.com
Sun Jan 25 21:11:57 UTC 2015


On 25 January 2015 at 20:53, Joachim Strömbergson <joachim at secworks.se> wrote:
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> Aloha!
>
> Ben Laurie wrote:
>> On 24 January 2015 at 17:40, Fredrik Thulin <fredrik at thulin.net>
>> wrote:
>>> What methodology can we use to choose MCU? I think the choice at
>>> this time is either for an ARM Cortex M4 (later on perhaps upgraded
>>> to pin compatible new M7), or Cortex A8/A9. I think both will work
>>> for this "not necessarily fast" target, but there would/could be a
>>> huge difference in how we do development in the next year or so
>>> based on this choice.
>>
>> Can I point out CHERI?
>>
>> http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/
>>
>> In short: a MIPS-64 softcore with a capability coprocessor (i.e.
>> fine-grained [down to the byte] memory controls), a FreeBSD port and
>> LLVM-based toolchain.
>
> Very nice. Skimming the website I don't get a feeling for what FPGA they
> have used to implement CHERI on. And how big it is.

Big. I think 500k gates on the FPGA, not fully utilised.

http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=English&No=501


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