Intel Corporation

Jungju Oh

David M Durham

Siddhartha Chhabra

Men Long

Eugene M Kishinevsky

Abhishek Basak

The present disclosure is directed to a flexible counter system for memory protection. In general, a counter system for supporting memory protection operations in a device may be made more efficient utilizing flexible counter structures. A device may comprise a processing module and a memory module. A flexible counter system in the memory module may comprise at least one data line including a plurality of counters. The bit-size of the counters may be reduced and/or varied from existing implementations through an overflow counter that may account for smaller counters entering an overflow state. Counters that utilize the overflow counter may be identified using a bit indicator. In at least one embodiment selectors corresponding to each of the plurality of counters may be able to map particular memory locations to particular counters.

Flexible counter system for memory protection

Examples include techniques for compressing counter values included in cryptographic metadata. In some examples, a cache line to fill a cache included in on-die processor memory may be received. The cache arranged to store cryptographic metadata. The cache line includes a counter value generated by a counter. The counter value to serve as version information for a memory encryption scheme to write a data cache line to a memory location of an off-die memory. In some examples, the counter value is compressed based on whether the counter value includes a pattern that matches a given pattern and is then stored to the cache. In some examples, a compression aware and last recently used (LRU) scheme is used to determine whether to evict cryptographic metadata from the cache.

Techniques to compress cryptographic metadata for memory encryption

In an embodiment, a processor includes: at least one core to execute instructions; and a memory protection logic to encrypt data to be stored to a memory coupled to the processor, generate a message authentication code (MAC) based on the encrypted data, the MAC to have a first value according to a first key, obtain the encrypted data from the memory and validate the encrypted data using the MAC, where the MAC is to be re-keyed to have a second value according to a second key and without the encrypted data. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Protecting a memory

In an embodiment, a processor includes: at least one core to execute instructions; a cache memory coupled to the at least one core to store data; and a tracker cache memory coupled to the at least one core. The tracker cache memory includes entries to store an integrity value associated with a data block to be written to a memory coupled to the processor. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Providing enhanced replay protection for a memory

Systems, apparatuses and methods may provide for receiving an incoming request to access a memory region protected by counter mode encryption and a counter tree structure having a plurality of levels. Additionally, the incoming request may be accepted and a determination may be made as to whether to suspend the incoming request on a per-level basis with respect to the counter tree structure.

Growing community of inventors

San Jose, CA, United States of America

Jungju Oh