The next WATCH talk, called The CHERI Processor: Revisiting the Hardware-Software Interface for Security is Monday July 6, 2015 from Noon-1pm EST. The presenter is Dr Robert N.M. Watson. Robert is a University Lecturer in Systems, Security, and Architecture at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory. He has a strong interests in open-source software, is on the board of directors of the FreeBSD Foundation, and was founder of the FreeBSD Project. He earned his PhD from the University of Cambridge. Abstract   The last five years, supported by DARPA’s CRASH and MRC research programmes, SRI International and the University of Cambridge have been engaged in a project to revisit the fundamentals […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog by by CCC Executive Council Member Mark D. Hill of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Times they are a changing. In the 20th century many researchers and companies innovated within a layer (or two) of the computing software-hardware stack. Today there is pressure and opportunity to innovate across layers, as argued in a 2012 CCC white paper on 21st Century Computer Architecture. A fantastic example of this cross-layer innovation was recently presented in the International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA) by Putman et al. “A Reconfigurable Fabric for Accelerating Large-Scale Datacenter Services”  and reported in WIRED by Robert McMillan “Microsoft Supercharges Bing […]