Mahmoud Hatem Elnashar: Access control for a NoC-based reconfigurable system (Komplexprak­tikum)

30.03.2023, 13:00 pm

Invitation to the presentation of Mahmoud Hatem Elnashar 

Topic: Access control for a NoC-based reconfigurable system

Project: Komplexpraktikum

Supervisors: Cornelia Wulf, Julian Haase

Abstract: In the last decade, numerous hardware-architectures and SoCs have been increasingly leveraging runtime-reconfigurable accelerators such as FPGAs due to the continuously rising and application specific performance requirements that are difficult to be met by general purpose CPUs. A well established design solution that leverages such accelerators is the introduction of a hybrid architecture in which a general purpose CPU is connected to an FPGA-accelerator or to a NoC where multiple accelerator implementations are connected together. While a NoC architecture provide a very flexible and scaleable way of communication between the components, it imposes security challenges in multi-tenant systems regarding access control.
In this report, the design and implementation of an access control system implemented on top of the hypervisor L4 using the L4Re runtime environment is discussed. The system is supposed to manage access to multiple FPGA-accelerators implemented in NoC fashion. First, a brief introduction to the problem specification, the runtime environment L4Re and the used hardware is given. Then, the design architecture and solution followed by tests and verification of correctness are discussed. Lastely, remarks to design and notes to future works are given.