Confidential Computing for RISC-V-based Platforms

Confidential computing aims to protect data in use on computing platforms. To achieve the goals of confidential computing, RISC-V platforms must provide a hardware-rooted, attested TCB that is able to remove all host software (OS/VMM and firmware), other tenants VMs, host software developers, operators and administrators of multi-tenant systems from the Trusted Computing Base (TCB) of tenant workloads. In this session, we cover the threat model for confidential computing and its implications on RISC-V-based platforms. We propose the major components of a Trusted Execution Environment reference architecture that scales to diverse workloads and introduce the interfaces between non-TCB and TCB components. The interfaces describes the use of the RISC-V privileged ISA to enforce confidentiality for workloads as well as the ISA and platform changes that should be considered to enforce the desired security objectives. The session will also address relevant standard protocols for attestation to inform the development of the confidential computing capability on RISC-V platforms for interoperability with other platforms.