Computer Security Conference 15 APR 2010 FPGAs In The Classroom : Practice and Experience William M. Jones, Ph.D. Department of Computer Science Coastal Carolina University

What is an FPGA?

Where are FPGAs Found? Prototyping HPC NICs GPUs DSP

And in CSCC Room 122! Why?

Common Target Computing Platform??? Assembly Programming Compiler Design & Implementation Digital Logic Architecture

Altera DE2 Development and Education Board

Assembly Programming (CSCI 210 and 310) Computer Architecture (CSCI 310) Compilers (CSCI 450) + Security (CSCI 210 and 385) FPGA Course Mappings Digital Logic  Combinational (CSCI 210)  Sequential (CSCI 310) Operating Systems CSCI 410 Embedded Systems CSCI 4xx?

Digital Logic Design (Traditional) Pencil and paper – Important pedagogical approach – Testing on quizzes and exams Use of breadboards – Hands-on – Tedious – Prone to error 7400 series logic gates – Voltage polarity – Difficult to debug

Digital Logic Design (Innovative) Pencil and paper – Still important Schematic capture – Draw circuit diagram – Easily modifiable Digital Logic (and more) IDE – Debugging capability Testing in lab environment – Access to prototype boards

IDE and Tools

Trace Program Execution

CSCI 210 – Computer Organization HW01 – Intro to logic gates, learn to use the IDE HW02 – Intro to logic gates, lights and switches HW03 – 1-bit Full Adder (from TT to implementation) HW04 – 4-bit 2’s complement ripple carry add/sub HW05 – Intro to NIOSII Processor, I/O, running sum HW06 – Binary encoding of instructions, addr. modes HW07 – Functions, loops, IF stmts., I/O with SSDs HW08 – Call stack management, param. passing HW09 – Buffer overflow, overwrite RA on call stack

Let’s Take a Look at Actual Student Work CSCI 210 Fall 2009, Spring 2010

CSCI 210 – HW02 – Intro to Gates Courtesy of Ruben Villao

CSCI 210 – HW04 – Full Add/Sub Courtesy of Ruben Villao A B C A + (-) B = C

CSCI 210 – HW07 – NIOSII w/ SSDs I/O w/ SSDs and switches Courtesy of Dorian Sovic NIOSII Embedded Processor 32-bit RISC

CSCI 210 – HW07 – Assembly Code Dorian Sovic

CSCI 210 – HW09 – Stack Exploitation Foo’s saved RA A[0] A[7] A[1]... Provide student w/ uncommented code. They identify problem and exploit it.

CSCI 310 – Computer Architecture HW01 – Multiplexer design (from TT to Kmap to impl) HW02 – 1-bit Full Adder (from TT to implementation) HW03 – 4-bit ripple carry adder HW04 – State machine design, 3-bit up/down counter HW05 – State machine design, serial data stream HW06 – MM:SS digital clock, (from TT to impl) HW07 – Intro to NIOSII Processor, I/O, running sum HW08 – Function calls, I/O HW09 – Functions, I/O, bit shifting/masking, stack Implemented Fall 2009

CSCI 210 – HW05 – State Machines Courtesy of James Bettke

CSCI 210 – HW05 – State Machines 1-Hot Encoding A = A+ = X’A + X’B + X’C + X’D B = B+ = XA C = C+ = XB Y = D = D+ = XC + XD Courtesy of James Bettke

CSCI 310 – HW06 -- MM:SS Digital Clock 4-bit counter (state transition diagram) Glue logic, frequency dividers Courtesy of Yosi Benzera

CSCI 310 – HW09 – Shifting/Masking Get some data Drive SSDs w/ software Stack management Shifting Masking Look up tables Courtesy of Yosi Benzera

Looking Towards Next Year Refine course objectives to delineate 210/310 – Hardware Description Language (VHDL) – ALU – Simple CPU Improve / create new security modules for placement in CSCI 385 Create interrupt (C-based) lab for CSCI 410 – Push button Create assembler lab for CSCI 450

A Simple ALU (Digital Logic/Comp. Arch.)

ALU Specifications

ALU Part 1

ALU Part 2

ALU Part 3

So What Do You Need? An FPGA Development Board/Kit – Xilinx – Altera – $150 - $500 ($275 each) IDE – ISE – Quartus – University programs / freely available Host Computer – PC – Laptop – USB

Digital Signal Processing, Video, Networking, Embedded Systems

Thank you! Questions? After talk comments on the next slide …

After-talk thoughts …. Attendees were asked if this focus on assembly and hardware is relevant to computer security. Responses were varied – Some thought it was paramount – Some thought it was not particularly relevant – Others suggested it depended on what type of job you ultimately got