Trust by Design

Hardware Security

Return to research

Root-of-trust, probing detection, and secure hardware design for trustworthy systems.

RoTProbingSecure BootPUF

Open-Source Hardware Root of Trust [1]

Open Se Cura builds on the open-source OpenTitan hardware root of trust (HRoT) and offers several key contributions:

  1. Auditability: the transparency of OpenTitan enables anyone to examine, evaluate, and contribute to its design and documentation, fostering the development of a fully auditable and dependable Silicon RoT.

  2. Flexibility: the modular design of OpenTitan enables seamless integration into diverse hardware environments, including data center servers, storage devices, and peripherals, with minimal system overhead. Additionally, adopters have the option to utilize either open-source or proprietary PDKs and EDA tools to suit their specific requirements.

Open Se Cura chip and measurement setup

(a) Top view of OpenFASOC-generated Temperature Sensors array integrated with OpenTitan IPs (b) Testing Setup of the initial HRoT implementation.

[1] G. Tao et al., "Open Se Cura: First silicon results of an auditable and transparent hardware root-of-trust system using open electronic design automation in 16 nm," in IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 58-66, Spring 2024, doi: 10.1109/MSSC.2024.3382071.