RISC-V & Security

Customizable Security Features

The RISC-V ISA is uniquely customizable via extensions allowing a composable approach to security where features and attributes can be added or omitted as applicable to the use case. This permits right-sized security avoiding waste and enabling resource sharing and reuse, where appropriate.

Scalable Across Use Cases

Scales across processor use cases, from simple microcontrollers to data centers and HPC.  Allows reuse, speeds time to deployment and reduces resource demand for developers of a range of solutions across segments.

Bespoke Security

The extensibility of RISC-V enables users to create bespoke security solutions for niche or special use cases that other architectures do not allow.

Community Resourced

A strong contributory RISC-V  ecosystem of security experts enables the pooling of community resources, reducing the individual development resource burden, allowing focus on specific competencies and improving overall performance.     

Secure By Design

The RISC-V ISA is specifically designed with security first features including multiple privilege levels, PMPs (physical memory protection), secure interprocessing and isolation through TEEs (trusted execution environments)

Future Proofed

Ability to adapt the ISA through extensions to modify security features to future proof against new and emerging threats (e.g, Post Quantum Cryptography).

Built on Experience

As a relatively new ISA, RISC-V draws upon decades of experience to build a secure architecture from the ground up, avoiding known security vulnerabilities and prepared for emerging ones.

Comprehensive

The RISC-V ISA comprehensively addresses both the operational security requirements of the application layer and data plus the need to secure specific hardware components. It ensures that assets are protected from unauthorized reading and modification and maintains legitimate access to resources.

End-to-End Ecosystem

As RISC-V adoption gains traction across multiple segments, the ecosystem is expanding to offer end-to-end security solutions that meet market demand and requirements. These include security specific solutions such as implementation and verification tools.

Heterogeneous and Secure 

Vendors frequently develop SOCs that deploy a heterogeneous mix of processor ISAs. Security ecosystem partners are delivering RISC-V focused solutions that ensure integrity across mixed architectures. 

3rd Party Initiatives

Developers are increasingly actively engaged in 3rd Party industry initiatives to ensure that their RISC-V-based solutions are ahead in addressing newly emerging security approaches (e.g. CHERI).