Performance vs. Security in Last-Level Cache for Today’s Multicore Processors.

Title of the Talk: Performance vs. Security in Last-Level Cache for Today’s Multicore Processors.
Speakers: Dr. Shirshendu Das
Host Faculty: Dr.Ashish Mishra
Date: Jan 06, 2026
Time: 110:00 am.

Abstract: Modern multicore processors face serious security challenges due to shared hardware resources such as the Last Level Cache (LLC). These shared caches enable a wide range of side-channel and covert-channel attacks that can leak sensitive information across security domains. In this talk, the speaker will discuss the fundamental vulnerabilities of LLCs on modern multicore systems. While several countermeasures have been proposed in the literature, most of them incur significant overhead in terms of performance loss, hardware complexity, or increased energy consumption. Designing secure cache architectures that balance strong security guarantees with high performance remains a major challenge. This talk will highlight these challenges and discuss key design principles for developing efficient and practical countermeasures without compromising system performance.

Bio: Dr. Shirshendu Das is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, Telangana, India. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati in 2016, where he also completed his M.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering. His research interests include Computer Architecture, Network-on-Chip (NoC), and Hardware Security.