
Xilinx follows security collaboration with investment
Xilinx has announced an undisclosed investment in one of its silicon design partners, Kameleon Security in Israel.
The two year old fabless startup is developing hardware for cloud computing security, which it calls a proactive Security Processing Unit (ProSPU).
The round of investment also includes funding from existing investors State of Mind Ventures and J-Ventures. Kameleon and Xilinx have a joint project underway to demonstrate securoity technologies later this year at the Open Compute Project (OCP) Global Summit. Participating in the investment round give Xilinx visibility of any possible takeovers of the technology and an option to purchase the startup in the future. This would be especially important following the acquisition of Xilinx by AMD for its data cetnre business. That deal has been approved by shareholders and US and EU regulators and is waiting on approval by Chinese authorities by the end of the year.
Preventing server cyberattacks requires establishing a root of trust (RoT) from the very first boot process alogside the CPU and this is an issue that Xilinx competitors such as Lattice Semiconductor and Microchip have been exploiting with their FPGA devices.
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This secure RoT can then be used to extend the chain of trust throughout the system’s lifecycle, meaning that every layer in the application stack is checked against the RoT to check it remains secure
Kameleon’s ProSPU already protects the system at boot and through RoT, in adherence with Open Compute Project (OCP) security standards. The ProSPU will also provide protection at runtime by dynamically securing the computing platform from the hardware all the way up the stack to the application running. Kameleon will demonstrate the ProSPU’s features at the OCP Global Summit in November this year working with Xilinx FPGAs.
“We see a lot of opportunity for Kameleon’s unique approach to dedicated security infrastructure,” said Sina Soltani, vice president of worldwide sales, Data Center Group at Xilinx. “We are excited to be working closely with Kameleon to bring the solution to market”.
“Cloud is redefining network and application security in a way that only secured infrastructure can assure business continuity. Kameleon’s rare combination of cybersecurity and semiconductor expertise and talent is a huge differentiator on the way to pioneer a new hardware security category. Xilinx investment and collaboration is a strong signal of Kameleon’s product market fit and I look forward to seeing it come to market,” said Nir Adler, general partner at State of Mind Ventures.
“Our roadmap toward a unified hardware security infrastructure represents a paradigm shift in how cybersecurity is traditionally done. Our collaboration with Xilinx brings valuable resources, guidance, and expertise in the data center and server market that will allow us to scale our development of the ProSPU and further our goal of creating a holistic and proactive cyber protection foundation that can scale across markets,” said Jorge Myszne, co-founder and CEO of Kameleon.
The company was founded by a team from Intel, Qualcomm, and Microsoft, along with the Israeli Defence Forces intelligence unit 8200.
www.xilinx.com; kameleonsec.com/
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