The GlobalPlatform consortium has announced the Pavona project, which develops an open distribution of hardware components that can be assembled into ready-for-manufacturing secure chips based on RISC-V microarchitecture. The distribution provides a modular library of IP blocks and reference chip implementations that are ready for certification and proven tapeout-ready. By combining elements from this library, one can build custom chips for various applications, from data centers, AI accelerators, and specialized controllers to resource-constrained embedded systems and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The project's developments are distributed under the Apache 2.0 license.
The project was founded by 12 companies and organizations, including Qualcomm Technologies, Meta, Analog Devices, Baochip, SIMPLE Crypto Association, Tenstorrent, Winbond, and ZeroRISC. The project is being developed on a neutral platform that is independent of individual manufacturers and is managed by participants from the community formed around it.
Pavona provides IP blocks with RISC-V cores (Ibex RV32IMCB and VexII), crypto accelerators supporting classical and post-quantum cryptographic algorithms, OTP/flash, SRAM, JTAG, ADC, I2C, GPIO, and SPI controllers. Among the cryptographic algorithms implemented at the hardware level are: HMAC, KMAC, AES, EDN, ASCON, ML-KEM, ML-DSA, DSA-SHA2, and SLH-DSA-SHAKE. Full documentation and resources for pre-manufacturing verification (Design Verification collateral) and RTL code are provided. In addition to hardware components, the project also offers software, such as a cryptographic library for integration with crypto accelerators, firmware, and related utilities.
Two reference implementations have been prepared based on Pavona: a standalone chip with integrated cryptographic capabilities for use as a 'Root of Trust' and a 'Root of Trust' implementation for chiplet architecture, tested in production using TSMC's 3nm (N3) process. Chiplets enable the creation of combined hybrid integrated circuits (multi-chip modules) composed of independent semiconductor blocks. It is noted that Pavona is the first project to provide a production-ready open stack embedded in chips with support for post-quantum cryptographic algorithms (PQC).
Source: opennet.ru
