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Hardware suggestion to work on TrustZone in Android

Alberto Maria Scattolo
Note: This was originally posted on 29th August 2011 at http://forums.arm.com

Hi everybody,

For my MSc thesis I have to work on ARM TrustZone and the idea is to use it in Android OS (2.3+). I'm pretty new to this world but reading the forum and the documentation I understand that a dev board (or even a consumer device) powered by a TrustZone capable CPU (Cortex A15, A9, A8, A5 and ARM1176) is not enough to work on TrustZone since it would also requre to have a Protection Controller, an Address Space Controller and a TrustZone "aware" interrupt controller.
So, as fas as I can understand, I think that devices like Google Nexus S, which is powered by a Samsung Hummingbird Cortex-A8, will not guarantee that I can actually work with TrustZone.
- Does this mean I have to use a development board?
- Only development boards by ARM? I've never used a dev board but I see there are a lot of dev board manufacturers.
- Do you have any board to suggest me as candidate for the project? I must work on TrustZone but I also need to run Android.

Thank a lot for you help.
Bests,

Alberto
Parents
  • Arm Employee Badge
    Note: This was originally posted on 31st August 2011 at http://forums.arm.com

    All Cortex-A based devices will have some level of TrustZone support.  But if you want to do something useful you'll need one with a proper TrustZone aware memory system. In some cases this is present, but not accessible (e.g. the Beagle board).  The Versatile Express A9 board from ARM does have a TZ aware memory system, but might be a bit pricey.  Your best bet might be to ping the board vendors - specifying that you want to run code in both Normal and Secure world.
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  • Arm Employee Badge
    Note: This was originally posted on 31st August 2011 at http://forums.arm.com

    All Cortex-A based devices will have some level of TrustZone support.  But if you want to do something useful you'll need one with a proper TrustZone aware memory system. In some cases this is present, but not accessible (e.g. the Beagle board).  The Versatile Express A9 board from ARM does have a TZ aware memory system, but might be a bit pricey.  Your best bet might be to ping the board vendors - specifying that you want to run code in both Normal and Secure world.
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