View Proposal
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Proposer
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Rob Stewart
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Title
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Monitoring protocol compliance of IP hardware blocks
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Goal
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Evaluate tool that generates hardware checkers
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Description
- Programmable hardware is increasingly used in many application areas, including Internet of Things and Smart devices, as well as safety critical systems. The correctness of hardware designs is therefore essential.
When two hardware components communicate, they must do so via an agreed protocol. An example is the widely used AXI protocol. Many hardware designs are not open source, meaning you can use the generated IP hardware block from a vendor, but cannot verify its implementation by inspecting the hardware description code. How are you to trust a piece of hardware? So instead, one must inspect its communication behaviours to have confidence in its correctness.
There is a tool called 'mbac', which generates hardware blocks from temporal properties that describe protocol rules. You can synthesise the generated hardware, meaning you can deploy it alongside closed source IP blocks, and it flags any time these properties are violated.
This project will evaluate the mbac tool in terms of its usefulness for widely used protocol standards, its scalability to complex protocols, its effectiveness in catching hardware bugs, and potential practical deployment scenarios to make users aware of hardware bugs.
- Resources
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Background
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Url
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Difficulty Level
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Challenging
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Ethical Approval
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None
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Number Of Students
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1
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Supervisor
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Rob Stewart
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Keywords
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Degrees
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Bachelor of Science in Computer Science
Bachelor of Science in Computer Systems
Master of Engineering in Software Engineering
Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence
Master of Science in Computer Science for Cyber Security
Master of Science in Computing (2 Years)
Master of Science in Data Science
Master of Science in Information Technology (Software Systems)
Master of Science in Network Security
Master of Science in Robotics
Master of Science in Software Engineering
Bachelor of Science in Computing Science
Bachelor of Engineering in Robotics
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science (Cyber Security)
Master of Science in Robotics with Industrial Application
BSc Data Sciences
MSc Applied Cyber Security