Design of a secure microprocessor

Abstract

This work presents the prototype design of a secure microprocessor that executes encrypted programs. The aim of such a secure processor is to prevent programs from being copied; otherwise the encrypted programs will not run on ordinary platforms. The idea is demonstrated through a concrete design of a 16-bit soft processor, namely CryptOdin, along with the simulations and physical implementation on FPGA. This processor is expected to easily hide critical algorithms/programs without sacrificing the performance by the help of a dedicated decryption unit implemented in the processor.