Researchers in embedded and reconfigurable computing are often hindered by a lack of suitable benchmarks with which to accurately evaluate their work. Without a suitable benchmark suite, researchers use either outdated, unrealistic benchmarks or spend valuable time creating their own. In this paper, we present ERCBench-a freely-available, open-source benchmark suite geared towards embedded and reconfigurable computing research. ERCBench benchmarks represent a variety of application areas, including multimedia processing, wireless communications, and cryptography. They consist of synthesizable Verilog models for hardware accelerators and hybrid hardware/software applications that combine softwarebased control flow with hardware-based computation tasks.

Software-defined radio (SDR) is an emerging technology that facilitates having multiple wireless communication protocols on one device. Previous work has shown that current W-CDMA, GPS, GSM, and WiMAX applications can run on this class of device while consuming significant processing power. Next generation wireless networks require speeds in excess of 50Mbps. Some of the fastest AES software implementations only achieve 20Mbps on our reference platform. In order to have secure software-defined radio, the security processing gap must be addressed. This paper presents instruction set architecture (ISA) extensions for the Sandblaster DSP. The Sandblaster DSP is a multithreaded processor for SDR that issues multiple operations each cycle and supports vector operations.

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As the field of determined and increasingly sophisticated adversaries multiplies, the risk to integrity of deployed computing devices magnifies. Given the ubiquitous connectivity, substantial storage, and accessibility, the increased reliance on computer platforms make them a significant target for attackers. Over the past decade, malware has transitioned from attacking a single program to subverting the operating system (OS) kernel by means of what is commonly known as a rootkit. While computer systems require patches to fix newly discovered vulnerabilities, undiscovered vulnerabilities remain. Furthermore, typical solutions utilize mechanisms that operate within the OS. If the OS becomes compromised, these mechanisms may be vulnerable to being disabled or upon detection of the potential compromise, being "shut down" until patched, or otherwise mitigated.We propose an innovative approach to designing computer systems that allows the behavior or functionality of the computer system to change based on the integrity of the system. Instead of attempting to prevent or detect all malware attacks, our proposed approach allows possible graceful degradation of functionality according to the security policy specification as anomalies of security concern are detected. We believe this innovative paradigm can determine the "integrity level" of the system. Based on the integrity level, the computer system may behave differently or limit access to data.

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