Invited paper: Resilient and energy-secure power management

Abstract

We present an industrial design perspective on power management. We focus primarily on server and mainframe class processors. However, recent advances in very low voltage (VLV) research in support of cognitive platforms of the future are also considered. A particular focus is on the special attention that needs to be placed on resilience and energy-secure design principles. The paper discusses how reliability gaps in power management hardware and/or algorithms can expose gaps in security in terms of so-called power attacks. We discuss current industrial practice and describe key challenges that need to be addressed by the research community in this regard. This is designed to be a tutorial-style survey and analysis paper.