LLM for SoC Security: A Paradigm Shift

Dipayan Saha; Shams Tarek; Katayoon Yahyaei; Sujan Kumar Saha; Jingbo Zhou; Mark Tehranipoor; Farimah Farahmandi

Paper 2023/1561

LLM for SoC Security: A Paradigm Shift

Dipayan Saha

, University of Florida

Shams Tarek, University of Florida

Katayoon Yahyaei, University of Florida

Sujan Kumar Saha, University of Florida

Jingbo Zhou, University of Florida

Mark Tehranipoor, University of Florida

Farimah Farahmandi, University of Florida

Abstract

As the ubiquity and complexity of system-on-chip (SoC) designs increase across electronic devices, the task of incorporating security into an SoC design flow poses significant challenges. Existing security solutions are inadequate to provide effective verification of modern SoC designs due to their limitations in scalability, comprehensiveness, and adaptability. On the other hand, Large Language Models (LLMs) are celebrated for their remarkable success in natural language understanding, advanced reasoning, and program synthesis tasks. Recognizing an opportunity, our research delves into leveraging the emergent capabilities of Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPTs) to address the existing gaps in SoC security, aiming for a more efficient, scalable, and adaptable methodology. By integrating LLMs into the SoC security verification paradigm, we open a new frontier of possibilities and challenges to ensure the security of increasingly complex SoCs. This paper offers an in-depth analysis of existing works, showcases practical case studies, demonstrates comprehensive experiments, and provides useful promoting guidelines. We also present the achievements, prospects, and challenges of employing LLM in different SoC security verification tasks.

Note: It is a preprint version.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Applications
Publication info: Preprint.
Keywords: Large Language Model ChatGPT GPT-4 Hardware Security SoC Security Verification RTL
Contact author(s): dsaha @ ufl edu
shams tarek @ ufl edu
ka yahyaei @ ufl edu
sujansaha @ ufl edu
jingbozhou @ ufl edu
tehranipoor @ ece ufl edu
farimah @ ece ufl edu
History: 2023-10-13: approved; 2023-10-10: received; See all versions
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2023/1561
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2023/1561,
      author = {Dipayan Saha and Shams Tarek and Katayoon Yahyaei and Sujan Kumar Saha and Jingbo Zhou and Mark Tehranipoor and Farimah Farahmandi},
      title = {{LLM} for {SoC} Security: A Paradigm Shift},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2023/1561},
      year = {2023},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/1561}
}