Case Studies

• Project: Morello; Demonstrates: CHERI at application and server scale
• Project: CheriBSD; Demonstrates: Protection of large existing software stacks
• Project: CHERIoT; Demonstrates: CHERI for constrained embedded systems
• Project: Codasip X730; Demonstrates: Commercially application-class CHERI processor

What these case studies demonstrate

Together, these examples show that CHERI is not limited to a single class of system. CHERI has been applied to the whole spectrum of computing applications:

• From the most constrained embedded devices to traditional application-class and large high-performance systems
• From tiny real-time operating systems to rich multi-user operating systems
• In open-source platforms and commercial processor products
• While reusing substantial existing C and C++ software

While each project has different goals and constraints, all demonstrate how capability protection can be introduced into real hardware and software systems, across the diversity of use cases, while reusing existing software. These examples also demonstrate that CHERI can often be introduced while reusing significant amounts of existing software, reducing the need for complete rewrites.

The examples also show that CHERI is an ecosystem change rather than one processor feature. These projects have demonstrated mature toolchains, operating systems, libraries, runtimes, and debugging support, showing readiness for product development.