Further reading
The CHERI ISA
The primary reference for the CHERI Instruction-Set Architecture (ISA) is the ISA specification; at the time of writing, the most recent version is Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions: CHERI Instruction-Set Architecture (Version 7)1.
An Introduction to CHERI
Our technical report, An Introduction to CHERI, provides a high-level overview of the CHERI architecture, ISA modeling, hardware implementations, and software stack2.
C/C++ Memory Safety
Published at ASPLOS 2015, Beyond the PDP-11: Architectural support for a memory-safe C abstract machine describes idiomatic C and spatial memory protection3.
We published a paper on our memory-safe OS userspace and application suite, CheriABI: Enforcing Valid Pointer Provenance and Minimizing Pointer Privilege in the POSIX C Run-time Environment, at ASPLOS 20194. We also released an extended technical-report version of this paper that includes greater implementation detail5.
We published Cornucopia: Temporal Safety for CHERI Heaps at Oakland 2020, explaining how to implement "sweeping revocation" using virtual-memory acceleration6.
We published our paper, Exploring C Semantics and Pointer Provenance, and the implications for software design, at POPL 2019; CHERI C was a case study in the practical enforcement of capability provenance-validity enforcement7.
Robert N. M. Watson, Peter G. Neumann, Jonathan Woodruff, Michael Roe, Hesham Almatary, Jonathan Anderson, John Baldwin, David Chisnall, Brooks Davis, Nathaniel Wesley Filardo, Alexandre Joannou, Ben Laurie, A. Theodore Markettos, Simon W. Moore, Steven J. Murdoch, Kyndylan Nienhuis, Robert Norton, Alex Richardson, Peter Rugg, Peter Sewell, Stacey Son, Hongyan Xia. Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions: CHERI Instruction-Set Architecture (Version 7), Technical Report UCAM-CL-TR-927, Computer Laboratory, June 2019.
Robert N. M. Watson, Simon W. Moore, Peter Sewell, and Peter G. Neumann. An Introduction to CHERI, Technical Report UCAM-CL-TR-941, Computer Laboratory, September 2019.
David Chisnall, Colin Rothwell, Robert N.M. Watson, Jonathan Woodruff, Munraj Vadera, Simon W. Moore, Michael Roe, Brooks Davis, and Peter G. Neumann. Beyond the PDP-11: Architectural support for a memory-safe C abstract machine, Proceedings of the Twentieth International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS 2015), Istanbul, Turkey, March 2015.
Brooks Davis, Robert N. M. Watson, Alexander Richardson, Peter G. Neumann, Simon W. Moore, John Baldwin, David Chisnall, Jessica Clarke, Nathaniel Wesley Filardo, Khilan Gudka, Alexandre Joannou, Ben Laurie, A. Theodore Markettos, J. Edward Maste, Alfredo Mazzinghi, Edward Tomasz Napierala, Robert M. Norton, Michael Roe, Peter Sewell, Stacey Son, and Jonathan Woodruff. CheriABI: Enforcing Valid Pointer Provenance and Minimizing Pointer Privilege in the POSIX C Run-time Environment. In Proceedings of 2019 Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS’19). Providence, RI, USA, April 13-17, 2019.
Brooks Davis, Robert N. M. Watson, Alexander Richardson, Peter G. Neumann, Simon W. Moore, John Baldwin, David Chisnall, Jessica Clarke, Nathaniel Wesley Filardo, Khilan Gudka, Alexandre Joannou, Ben Laurie, A. Theodore Markettos, J. Edward Maste, Alfredo Mazzinghi, Edward Tomasz Napierala, Robert M. Norton, Michael Roe, Peter Sewell, Stacey Son, and Jonathan Woodruff. CheriABI: Enforcing valid pointer provenance and minimizing pointer privilege in the POSIX C run-time environment, Technical Report UCAM-CL-TR-932, Computer Laboratory, January 2019.
Nathaniel Wesley Filardo, Brett F. Gutstein, Jonathan Woodruff, Sam Ainsworth, Lucian Paul-Trifu, Brooks Davis, Hongyan Xia, Edward Tomasz Napierala, Alexander Richardson, John Baldwin, David Chisnall, Jessica Clarke, Khilan Gudka, Alexandre Joannou, A. Theodore Markettos, Alfredo Mazzinghi, Robert M. Norton, Michael Roe, Peter Sewell, Stacey Son, Timothy M. Jones, Simon W. Moore, Peter G. Neumann, and Robert N. M. Watson. Cornucopia: Temporal Safety for CHERI Heaps. In Proceedings of the 41st IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland 2020). San Jose, CA, USA, May 18-20, 2020.
Kayvan Memarian, Victor B. F. Gomes, Brooks Davis, Stephen Kell, Alexander Richardson, Robert N. M. Watson, and Peter Sewell. Exploring C Semantics and Pointer Provenance. In Proceedings of the 46th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL), Cascais, Portugal, 13-19 January, 2019.