Secure Speculative Core
Avi Mendelson · 2019
The recent attacks on speculative cores have led people to believe that high-performance cores and security demands contradict each other. This work demonstrates that if the core is designed while considering security demands as a first-class citizen, it can support high-performance computing via out-of-order architectures and remain secure. We propose a new methodology for secure and speculative core (SCC) architecture. The design uses an enhanced out-of-order core architecture to achieve the required high-performance and implements a unique secure-wrapper that guarantees the required security properties. The methodology provides a set of mechanisms to implement the SSC architecture. Our experiments indicate that adding these new features to out-of-order cores such as the Intel Coffee Lake can immunize the system against side-channel attacks, with only minor performance degradation.