Welcome to the Sunburst Project

Putting CHERIoT hardware in the hands of embedded systems engineers.

Sonata boards are now available to purchase from Mouser.

Learn more >

The Project

The Sunburst project improves the security of embedded devices by increasing the adoption of secure hardware. We will produce two types of development boards featuring capability-enhanced processors based on the CHERIoT technology, with the goal of getting this technology into the hands of engineers.

The Sunburst project is a collaboration between lowRISC CIC, DSbD / UKRI, and NewAE Technology (a wholly owned subsidiary of lowRISC). The CHERIoT technology was initially specified by Microsoft based on the CHERI work done at the University of Cambridge.

This project runs from to .

The News

The Plan

Sonata

A low cost development board for investigating CHERI security enhancements.

  • lowRISC will build a complete system around the existing cheriot-ibex hardware design and host it on a low-cost, purpose-built FPGA board.
  • 100 of these boards will be distributed to target institutions.
  • The prototype board will be made available through an international distributor.

Symphony

A feature-rich evaluation platform that will allow full analysis of CHERI enhancements in a wider system.

  • Symphony is a new top-level design that lowRISC will develop, integrating cheriot-ibex with an OpenTitan root of trust via a purpose-designed bridge interface.
  • This will be hosted on NewAE's CW340 FPGA board.

lowRISC & UKRI

lowRISC and UKRI will coordinate an outreach program to distribute these boards to their intended audiences.

Open Source

All of the digital designs, board designs, and software will be open source.