Hardware-Obfuscated Secure Task Partitioning for Time-Triggered Multi-Core Automotive Socs
K. Thamizhmaran · i-manager’s Journal on Embedded Systems · 2026
Modern automotive systems increasingly rely on complex multi-core Systems-onChip (SoCs) executing mixed-criticality applications under stringent real-time constraints. While time-triggered architectures provide deterministic timing guarantees essential for safety certification, they introduce significant security vulnerabilities through predictable task scheduling patterns that facilitate timing-based side-channel attacks and intellectual property theft. This paper proposes a novel hardware-software co-design framework that integrates Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) with time-triggered scheduling to enable secure, obfuscated task partitioning without compromising real-time guarantees. Our approach generates multiple valid schedule configurations from a single base schedule, using a PUFderived key to select a specific instance at system initialization, thereby introducing deviceunique obfuscation while maintaining worst-case execution time (WCET) certifiability. The framework includes: (1) an obfuscation-aware scheduler that extends conventional timetriggered paradigms with security-aware constraints, (2) a lightweight hardware PUF module integrated into the SoC's security subsystem, and (3) formal verification methods to ensure the obfuscation process preserves timing guarantees required by ISO 26262 standards. Experimental evaluation on a Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC platform demonstrates effective obfuscation against schedule extraction attacks with minimal overhead—less than 3.5% increase in schedule length and 2.1% additional power consumption. The system successfully thwarts correlation attacks attempting to deduce task-to-core mappings, achieving 98.7% attack detection rate while maintaining 100% schedulability for AUTOSAR-compliant task sets. This work bridges the critical gap between real-time certifiability and proactive security in nextgeneration automotive electronics, addressing emerging threats in connected and autonomous vehicles without sacrificing safety assurances.