Toward On-chip Network Security Using Runtime Isolation Mapping

Abstract

Many-cores execute a large number of diverse applications concurrently. Inter-application interference can lead to a security threat as timing channel attack in the on-chip network. A non-interference communication in the shared on-chip network is a dominant necessity for secure many-core platforms to leverage the concepts of the cloud and embedded system-on-chip. The current non-interference techniques are limited to static scheduling and need router modification at micro-architecture level. Mapping of applications can effectively determine the interference among applications in on-chip network. In this work, we explore non-interference approaches through run-time mapping at software and application level. We map the same group of applications in isolated domain(s) to meet non-interference flows. Through run-time mapping, we can maximize utilization of the system without leaking information. The proposed run-time mapping policy requires no router modification in contrast to the best known competing schemes, and the performance degradation is, on average, 16% compared to the state-of-the-art baselines.