ARM to Bake On-Die Security Into Next Gen Cores

From DailyTech: Many were surprised when Intel Corp. (INTC), the world's largest chipmaker, scooped up veteran security firm McAfee in August 2010. While the fit of hardware company plus software vendor seemed an odd equation, it began to make sense when put in the context of growing interest in hardware-based security solutions.

Even as Intel has moved to put some of those designs on-die with technologies like Trusted Execution, one of the chipmaker's top rivals -- architecture and intellectual property (IP) core licenser ARM Holdings plc (LON:ARM) -- has announced a brand new hardware security initiative of its own.

ARM already has baked a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) solution dubbed "ARM TrustZone" into every one of its ARM Cortex A-Series cores, such as those found in Apple, Inc.'s (AAPL) iPhone or the Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd. (KS:005930) Galaxy Nexus. The key now is to enable the hardware capabilities with supported software and operating system solutions.

To that end ARM is pairing with Giesecke & Devrient, makers of a custom heavily sandboxed, remotely manageable TEE operating system dubbed "Mobicore". As an alternative to iOS or Android, companies could flash employee handsets with Mobicore, which is now being accelerated and enabled directly by hardware, thanks to the new partnership.

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