Hardware Architecture & SoCs Topics
Covers chip design, System-on-Chip (SoC) architecture, custom silicon strategies, hardware accelerators, IP development, and the integration of silicon design with software ecosystems.
Hardware and Software Integration for Cryptography
Understanding how cryptographic operations are split between hardware and software, including secure enclaves, dedicated cryptographic accelerators, and processor instruction set support. Topics include hardware backed key storage, attestation and lifecycle management, performance trade offs of offloading cryptography to hardware versus running software implementations, firmware and platform security considerations, integration points between operating system and hardware, and protecting against hardware based side channel attacks such as timing, power analysis, and fault injection. Candidates should be able to discuss verification and testing strategies, fallback strategies when hardware is not available, and operational implications of deploying hardware backed security at scale.
Hardware Security and Secure Enclave
This topic covers trusted execution environments and hardware backed security primitives such as the Secure Enclave. Candidates should understand isolated execution and storage for keys, hardware backed attestation and provisioning flows, secure boot and firmware concerns, the constrained APIs and performance characteristics of secure coprocessors, and trade offs between implementing features in hardware versus software. Practical discussion should include how to integrate hardware backed keys into system architecture, handle attestation and provisioning, mitigate side channel risks, and manage firmware and supply chain threats.