New Innovation Frontiers with Large Language Models for SoC Security

Abstract: Ensuring the security of system-on-chips (SoCs) and edge devices are a critical imperative, yet traditional verification techniques struggle to keep pace due to significant challenges in automation, scalability, comprehensiveness, and adaptability. The advent of large language models (LLMs), with their remarkable capabilities in natural language understanding, code generation, and advanced reasoning, presents a new paradigm for tackling these issues. Moving beyond monolithic models, an agentic approach allows for the creation of multi-agent systems where specialized LLMs collaborate to solve complex problems more effectively. This keynote address will present a multi-agent assistant system designed to automate and enhance SoC security verification by integrating specialized agents for tasks like verification question answering, security asset identification, threat modeling, test plan and property generation, vulnerability detection, and simulation-based bug validation. 

Mark M. Tehranipoor is currently the Distinguished Professor, the Intel Charles E. Young Preeminence Endowed Chair Professor and the Sachio Semmoto Chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of Florida. His current research projects include: hardware security and trust, supply chain security, IoT security, VLSI design, test and reliability. He has 50+ patents issued/pending, 19 books, and 500+ conference/journal publications. He is a recipient of 18 best paper awards and nominations, as well as the 2008 IEEE Computer Society (CS) Meritorious Service Award, the 2012 IEEE CS Outstanding Contribution, the 2009 NSF CAREER Award, and the 2014 AFOSR MURI award. He received the 2020 University of Florida Innovation of the year as well as teacher/scholar of the year awards. He co-founded the IEEE International Symposium on Hardware-Oriented Security and Trust (HOST), IEEE International Conference on Physical Assurance and Inspection of Electronics (PAINE). He serves on the program committee of more than a dozen leading conferences and workshops. He has also served as Program and General Chair of a number of IEEE and ACM sponsored conferences and workshops (HOST, ITC, DFT, D3T, DBT, NATW, and more). He is currently serving as a founding EIC for Journal on Hardware and Systems Security (HaSS) and served as Associate Editor for TC, JETTA, JOLPE, TODAES, IEEE D&T, TVLSI. He is currently serving as a founding director for Florida Institute for Cybersecurity Research (FICS) and a number of other centers with focus on microelectronics security. Dr. Tehranipoor is the recipient of the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) Aristotle Award, a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the ACM, a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), a Fellow of AAIA, a Fellow of AIIA, a Golden Core Member of IEEE Computer Society, and Member of ACM SIGDA.