On-Chip Intelligence for Real-Time Threat Monitoring

As modern system-on-chip platforms become more complex, they are more exposed to advanced runtime threats that traditional security methods have difficulty handling. Threats like hardware Trojans, malicious firmware, microarchitecture side channels, and physical attacks are increasingly common on today’s SoC platforms. Traditional design-time verification and broad monitoring are not enough to detect changing adversarial behaviors. Therefore, ensuring security during real-time system operation is now a key challenge. An extensive overview of on-chip intelligence, a paradigm in which lightweight embedded machine-learning engines continuously profile system activity and identify anomalies at runtime, is provided in this chapter. Modern methods for identifying power-timing manipulations, Trojan horses, sidechannel anomalies, and fault injection attempts are assessed. Additionally, we present an architectural blueprint for next-generation self-defending chips that incorporate cross-layer monitoring fabrics, secure enclaves, trace buffers, and AI accelerators.