Make The Right Choices For Enhanced Security On RISC-V

Two things are certain to make their presence felt at Embedded World 2023: the growing presence of RISC-V and the importance of safety and security in any embedded system.

The breadth of RISC-V applications is expanding rapidly from IoT, mobile devices, to high performance computing, automotive and more. Its adoption, along with RISC-V International memberships, is also expanding from startups and research projects, to serious and commercial adoption by tier one technology brands. RISC-V has gone well beyond hype, and is quickly heading into mainstream applications.

Security is a tickbox in developing embedded and connected products. Yet many companies struggle to seriously address security – particularly with a scalable or a future-proof approach. Security is the ‘feature’ that too many companies fail to see the value in. That is in spite of the very fact that everyone knows they need it!

Without security there is no safety

Implementing security requires time, expertise, and engineering resources in a rapidly developing environment. To be able to differentiate today, SoC designers need ready-to-use security that they can optimize for their unique application.

Added to that, you can say that without security there really can be no safety. Insufficient safety and security is a potential hurdle to the wider adoption of RISC-V based products.

RISC-V is increasingly being implemented in security systems and it does have a basic set of security mechanisms. But, going forward, RISC-V offers the ideal platform to develop the widest range of systems for all types of functionally safe and cybersecure applications and functions – particularly for domain-specific designs which struggle to get the custom solution or the necessary support from proprietary ISAs.

SecuRISC5 initiative

The SecuRISC5 ecosystem is building on the work of the RISC-V International Working Groups to implement new standards as they are ratified and to offer solutions particularly to custom requirements with domain specific processing requirements.

The Codasip initiative SecuRISC5 was launched in late 2022, to bring together an approach combining very high-quality RISC-V processor cores, plus development tools, platforms and software from partners. A simplified integration for SoC designers, the framework includes reference platforms with configurable and customizable IP through editable source code.

A manageable long-term approach to developing safe and secure applications requires some degree of automation, both in the toolset/UI developing the processor and in the architectural description language – the right choices can make it easy to insert much needed enhanced security features into RISC-V hardware designs, even customized, domain specific designs.

Come see Codasip at Embedded World 2023, booth 4-565 to learn more about safe and secure custom compute.