Beyond Semiconductor

GEON SoC Security Platform

There is a growing awareness of threats posed by devices that were traditionally not considered security critical. With rising connectivity, versatility and programmability built into modern chips, many end up in a position where they can be used to facilitate the extraction of valuable data or influence operation of a critical system.

The growing impact and costs of security breaches are shifting the industry towards a future where sound security architectures and approaches must be employed to ensure device compliance with emerging standards and regulation. Lack of appropriate security functionality is quickly becoming the biggest threat to device longevity.

Introducing an IP Solution: the GEON SoC Security Platform

The GEON™ SoC Security Platform, an essential suite of hardware security IP, is a natural response to support design teams across a wide spectrum of chip designs and industries. Since there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution in secure chip design, the GEON SoC Platform includes all the common and usual security functions necessary to secure a modern SoC.

The GEON SoC Platform consists of the following modules:

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GEON Secure Boot

Provides a hardware root of trust and ensures that only authentic, vendor-issued software is allowed to run on a device.

GEON Secure JTAG

Provides public key infrastructure (PKI) authentication of a debug user and the device, enabling secure JTAG access and secure failure analysis.

GEON Firmware Encryption

Protects the confidentiality and integrity of firmware or of software and related data.

GEON HSM

Implements a hardware security module on a chip, enabling cryptographic operations while protecting (not exposing) secret key material.

The GEON SoC Platform is configurable so that only those functions needed to address the threat assessment of the design team need be selected. This allows a team to minimize area requirements while optimizing the performance of the security subsystem being deployed. The platform is also processor agnostic and works with all modern architectures including ARM, MIPS, RISC-V, and the entire BA2x processor family from Beyond Semiconductor.

SoC Security with Silicon Efficiency

All the security functions in the GEON SoC platform share common hardware logic and accelerators wherever possible. This way, adding additional security functions will have only negligible impact on power and gate count.

For example, cryptographic hardware accelerators, secret (key) storage, protection mechanisms, random number generation, and other common functions are shared among all instantiated GEON security functions.

Let Us Help Solve Your SoC Security Challenges

Building a secure SoC is a complex task. We understand this complexity and recognize that there are trade offs that must be analyzed throughout the design process. The GEON SoC Security Platform is supported by our team of security experts to help customers achieve an optimum solution.

Security