A Survey on Security Mechanisms for NoC-based Many-Core SoCs

Abstract

The adoption of many-cores systems introduces the concern for data protection as a critical design requirement due to the resource sharing and the simultaneous executions of several applications on the platform. A secure application that processes sensitive data may have its security harmed by a malicious process. The literature contains several proposals to protect many-cores against attacks, focusing on the protection of the application execution or the access to shared memories. However, there is a gap to be fulfilled: a solution covering the entire application lifetime, including its admission, execution, and peripheral's access. This survey discusses three security-related issues: the secure admission of applications, the prevention of resource sharing during their execution, and the safe access to external devices. This survey concludes with an evaluation of the studied methods, pointing out directions and research opportunities.