Mohamed “Aly” El-Hadedy, electrical and computer engineering assistant professor, was part of a team of authors that won the Best Paper at the 2022 IEEE International System-on-Chip (SoC) Conference (IEEE SOCC) for their novel cybersecurity solution. Assistant Professor Aly and his team competed against more than 60 other research papers accepted and presented for competition.
Held in Belfast, Northern Ireland, scholars from around the world shared their latest findings in System-on-Chip (SoC), which is ubiquitous in technology today. Laptops, smart phones, self-driving cars and countless other technologies rely on SoC.
By 2030, it’s estimated that the number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices — physical objects like cars with sensors capable of exchanging information over the Internet — will reach more than 25 billion. This exponential proliferation presents a cybersecurity issue.
In response, the National Institute of Standard and Technology put forth an international competition to develop a lightweight cryptographic solution to secure IoT devices.
Aly and his team published “RECO-HCON: A High-Throughput Reconfigurable Compact ASCON Processor for Trusted IoT,” proposing a solution to the problem of insufficient cybersecurity in high-performance computing clusters connected to the same network or Internet.
The proposed solution involves sharing data securely while using significantly less in processing power. Aly, colleagues from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and researchers at Changhai Jiao Tong University developed an incredibly small crypto-processor —100 million to 1 billion times smaller than the average smartphone — and consuming a trivial amount of power.
Researchers said idea was inventive and effective, tackling an area of SoC rarely investigated.
“We won the best paper as we built a novel idea never been addressed in the area of system on-chip,” Aly says. “My team is focusing on selling the reconfigurability aspect in the new system on chip generation which could be considered a revolution in the technology”
For 35 years the IEEE International System-on-Chip Conference (SOCC) has been the premier forum for sharing the latest advancements in SoC architecture, systems, logic and circuit design, process technology, testing, design tools, and applications. The conference includes keynote and plenary speeches, oral and poster presentations, hot-topic panel sessions and industrial talks.