PIM-Enclave: Bringing Confidential Computation Inside Memory

Abstract

Demand for data-intensive workloads and confidential computing are the prominent research directions shaping the future of cloud computing. Computer architectures are evolving to accommodate the computing of large data better. Protecting the computation of sensitive data is also an imperative yet challenging objective; processor-supported secure enclaves serve as the key element in confidential computing in the cloud. However, side-channel attacks are threatening their security boundaries. The current processor architectures consume a considerable portion of its cycles in moving data. Near data computation is a promising approach that minimizes redundant data movement by placing computation inside storage. In this paper, we present a novel design for Processing-In-Memory (PIM) as a data-intensive workload accelerator for confidential computing. Based on our observation that moving computation closer to memory can achieve efficiency of computation and confidentiality of the processed information simultaneously, we study the advantages of confidential computing \emph{inside} memory. We then explain our security model and programming model developed for PIM-based computation offloading. We construct our findings into a software-hardware co-design, which we call PIM-Enclave. Our design illustrates the advantages of PIM-based confidential computing acceleration. Our evaluation shows PIM-Enclave can provide a side-channel resistant secure computation offloading and run data-intensive applications with negligible performance overhead compared to baseline PIM model