Bhagi Narahari
Research Projects and Selected Publications


Research Projects


Hardware/Software Approaches to Software Security

The new-found ubiquity of embedded processors in consumer and industrial applications brings with it an intensified focus on security, as a strong level of trust in the system software is crucial to their widespread deployment. The growing area of software protection attempts to address the key steps used by hackers in attacking a software system. In this research, we explore an integrated hardware-software approach to software security. The focus of our research is exploring the role of hardware in creating more secure systems (with special focus on embedded systems) and specifically the question of how  hardware can assist us in providing secure platforms. Several problems and projects are being considered in this research.
  

Compiler Optimization for ILP Architectures
Recent architectures, such as Intel's IA-64 family, are based on the EPIC (Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing) architecture. EPIC processors provide a large degree of hardware parallelism, but as opposed to superscalar processors, require that dependence analysis and scheduling be done entirely by the software -- thus making the role of the compiler even more critical.  they require that parallelism be extracted by the compiler.Our projects have focused  on developing an Optimizing Assembler for EPIC Architectures, and developing a research compiler infrastructure for Intel's IA-64 processor. Funded in part by National Security Agency, under the LUCITE program.
   


   Embedded Systems