Department of Computer Science and Technology

Technical reports

DSbD CHERI and Morello Capability Essential IP (Version 1)

Robert N. M. Watson, Jonathan Woodruff, Alexandre Joannou, Simon W. Moore, Peter Sewell, Arm Limited

December 2020, 25 pages

This work was funded by the UK Government’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) under the Digital Security by Design (DSbD) Programme delivered by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), as part of the DSbD Technology Platform Prototype project (105694).

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. Sponsored in part by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), under contract FA8750-10-C-0237 (“CTSRD”), with additional support from FA8750-11-C-0249 (“MRC2”), HR0011-18-C-0016 (“ECATS”), and FA8650-18-C-7809 (“CIFV”) as part of the DARPA CRASH, MRC, and SSITH research programs. The views, opinions, and/or findings contained in this report are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official views or policies, either expressed or implied, of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.

Additional support was received from St John’s College Cambridge, the Google SOAAP Focused Research Award, a Google Chrome University Research Program Award, the RCUK’s Horizon Digital Economy Research Hub Grant (EP/G065802/1), the EPSRC REMS Programme Grant (EP/K008528/1), the EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account (EP/K503757/1), the EPSRC IOSEC grant (EP/EP/R012458/1), the ERC Advanced Grant ELVER (789108), the Isaac Newton Trust, the UK Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF), Thales E-Security, Microsoft Research Cambridge, Arm Limited, Google DeepMind, HP Enterprise, and a Gates Cambridge Scholarship.

DOI: 10.48456/tr-953

Abstract

The CHERI protection model extends contemporary Instruction Set Architectures (ISAs) with support for architectural capabilities. The UKRI Digital Security by Design (DSbD) programme is supporting the creation of Arm’s prototype Morello processor, System-on-Chip (SoC), and board. Morello experimentally incorporates the CHERI protection model, developed at the University of Cambridge and SRI International, into the ARMv8-A architecture. This document declares a set of capability essential IP – ideas essential to the creation of a contemporary CHERI capability system in architecture and microarchitecture. Arm and Cambridge agree that they have made this IP available for use without restriction. This document also identifies a set of CHERI background documents that may be of value as prior art.

Full text

PDF (0.4 MB)

BibTeX record

@TechReport{UCAM-CL-TR-953,
  author =	 {Watson, Robert N. M. and Woodruff, Jonathan and Joannou,
          	  Alexandre and Moore, Simon W. and Sewell, Peter and Arm
          	  Limited},
  title = 	 {{DSbD CHERI and Morello Capability Essential IP (Version 1)}},
  year = 	 2020,
  month = 	 dec,
  url = 	 {https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-953.pdf},
  institution =  {University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory},
  doi = 	 {10.48456/tr-953},
  number = 	 {UCAM-CL-TR-953}
}