Security Association Database Update Coherency in Multi-Channel Systems
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Solution Overview
Problem
In high-speed multi-channel systems, simultaneous updates to Security Association Database (SAD) entries can result in lost updates, leading to potential security breaches, and existing solutions are complex and affect system performance or introduce delays.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a first-come, first-serve access scheme for SAD entries across multiple security channels, using a controller with a register circuit, arbiter circuit, weight control logic, grant tree logic, and grant logic to prioritize and manage access, ensuring only one channel updates an entry at a time.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If multiple security channels simultaneously update SAD entries in high-speed systems, then processing speed and productivity are improved, but update coherency is lost and security integrity deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the SAD access control into multiple independent semaphores, one for each security channel. Each semaphore independently controls access to SAD entries for its specific channel, allowing concurrent safe access across multiple channels without requiring a single global lock, thus maintaining both high processing speed and update coherency.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces semaphores as intermediary objects between security channels and SAD entries. These semaphores mediate the access control mechanism, enabling coordinated access to shared resources without direct channel-to-channel coordination complexity, thereby resolving the coherency issue while preserving parallel processing capability.
2Reliability
If complex algorithms are used to resolve SAD update coherency issues, then update coherency is improved, but device complexity and processing delay increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements self-service through hardware-based semaphores that automatically manage access control without requiring complex software algorithms. The semaphore hardware circuitry inherently provides mutual exclusion and coherency guarantees through its physical design, eliminating the need for sophisticated coordination algorithms while maintaining update coherency.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces complex software-based coherency algorithms with a hardware semaphore mechanism. This substitution moves the coherency management function from the software algorithm domain to the hardware circuit domain, where it can be implemented more simply and efficiently, reducing overall system complexity while ensuring reliable update coherency.
Data Source
AI summary
An apparatus and method for updating security association database entries in a system having multiple security channels by selectively granting access to the entries by a plurality of the multiple security channels that may need to update the same entry using a first-come, first-served scheme. The apparatus includes a controller circuit that functions to carry out the method which, for each of the multiple security channels, includes determining whether another of the security channels has a higher priority to access a particular security association database entry. If no other channel has a higher priority, then the channel requesting access to the entry retrieves it from its address location, modifies it, and writes the modified entry back to its address location. The controller prevents other channels from simultaneously, or substantially simultaneously, retrieving and modifying the same entry.