Turning Debug into Hardware-Based IoT Security

It’s funny how when you think you know what a company does, it goes and talks to a customer and comes away with something even more interesting. Such is the case with UltraSoC, which just came out with what it calls “Bare Metal Security” to address the all-consuming issue of security for the Internet of Things (IoT).
I bumped into UltraSoC’s CEO, Rupert Baines (ex-picoChip), at his booth at an event earlier this year, but we didn’t really get to talk about his new venture, except to say it had to do with inserting the hooks to accelerate IC test, verification, and debug. Then I noticed the recent Bare Metal Security announcement and so we connected.

UltraSoC’s initial goal was to simplify the test and debug of really complicated system-on-chip (SoC) IC designs with dozens of cores, hundreds of IP blocks, and millions of transistors, all involving complex hardware and software interactions and dependencies that have become enormously difficult to debug.