Industry Expert Blogs
CXL - The Latest Specification in Secured Network Traffic-November 16, 2020 |
Welcome to the wonderful and cryptic world of secured traffic with CXL being the latest specification to adopt it. CXL2.0 specification introduces integrity & data encryption (IDE) schematics for both CXL.io & CXL.cachemem protocols. CXL.io pathway uses PCIe specification defined IDE, while CXL.cachemem related updates are introduced in CXL2.0 specifications. In this blog we’ll provide a broad overview of what a secure setup looks like and the strategies adopted by CXL for the same.
CXL IDE can be used to secure traffic via the AES-GCM algorithm (more on this in upcoming blogs) within a TTE (Trusted Execution Environment). In a nutshell, TTE is an isolated and secure environment that runs parallel to OS, where sensitive data is stored and processed.
When running over a TTE, CXL IDE protects the transactions, both data and metadata, exchanged between the two devices on the physical link by using symmetric crypto keys (CXL chooses 256-bit key length for AES-GCM).