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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
  • Note: This was originally posted on 1st September 2011 at http://forums.arm.com

    Yes. To date all of the ARM Cortex-A family implement the security extensions; implementations from other companies with an architecture license can choose to implement them, or not.

    As per TTFN's comment, it's not just about the processor though. The memory system around the processor must also be implemented to take advantage of the extra security signalling generated by the core extensions; it is possible to have a Cortex-A core in a SoC with no security benefits at all if the memory system isn't using the extra bus signalling to partition resources.
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  • Note: This was originally posted on 1st September 2011 at http://forums.arm.com

    Yes. To date all of the ARM Cortex-A family implement the security extensions; implementations from other companies with an architecture license can choose to implement them, or not.

    As per TTFN's comment, it's not just about the processor though. The memory system around the processor must also be implemented to take advantage of the extra security signalling generated by the core extensions; it is possible to have a Cortex-A core in a SoC with no security benefits at all if the memory system isn't using the extra bus signalling to partition resources.
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