Qualcomm Incorporated

Sagar Bamashetti

Darshan Kumar Nandanwar

Hithesh Hassan Lepaksha

Kartik Gunvantbhai Desai

A method includes executing a first pointer authentication instruction, including a first pointer authentication code, on a pointer in a speculative path of a pipeline. The method also includes determining whether the first pointer authentication code for the pointer fails. The method further includes determining whether the first pointer authentication code for the pointer differs from a previous pointer authentication code for the pointer in response to the first pointer authentication code failing. The method still further includes incrementing a failure counter in response to determining that the first pointer authentication code for the pointer failed and that the first pointer authentication code for the pointer differs from the previous pointer authentication code for the pointer. The method additionally includes determining whether the failure counter is greater than a threshold value and performing a defensive action in response to the failure counter being greater than the threshold value.

Systems and methods for defending against side channel attacks to speculative execution of processor pipeline instructions

A processing unit including a dynamically allocatable vector register file for non-vector instruction processing is disclosed. The processing unit includes an integer execution circuit and integer register file for processing integer instructions. The processing unit also includes a vector execution circuit and a vector register file for processing vector instructions. The integer and vector register files are each sized at design time. A processing unit may be called upon to execute varying workloads that vary between integer and vector operations. Rather than statically dedicating the entire vector register file to vector registers, the processor is configured to dynamically allocate a portion(s) of the vector registers in the vector register file for use in the execution of integer instructions.

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Chadchan, India

Sagar Bamashetti