Contracts for Innovation: DSbD Advancing CHERI RISC-V Devices

Overview

Backed by the Department forScience, Innovation and Technology, this Contracts for Innovation competition is focused on accelerating the availability of commercial off-the-shelf CHERI (Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions) devices for embedded computing.

The goal is to support the development and market readiness of CHERI-enabled hardware that strengthens system security at scale.

Competition structure:

• Single-phase, two-stage process
• Progression to stage 2 depends on successful delivery of stage 1 milestones and available funding

Funding available:

• Up to £3 million for stage 1
• Up to £7 million for stage 2

Scope

The aim of the competition is to fund activities in maturing and growing the availability of commercial off the shelf implementations of CHERI (Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions) enabled devices for use in embedded computing.

The competition is supporting economic growth and societal resilience through accelerating the adoption and diffusion of the secure by design CHERI technology.

Particular focus is being placed in the context of CHERI-enabled devices and the associated tooling and software components. Aiming to overcome the private sector’s underinvestment in protections for memory safety and compartmentalisation in embedded computing by creating CHERI-enabled devices that will enable software developers to adopt and commercialise a diversity of secured by design products and services.

Your project must focus on accelerating the availability of commercial-off-the-shelf CHERI-enabled devices. The goal is to broaden the availability of such devices for use by industry and software developers.

Projects are required to progress or accelerate the availability of CHERI-enabled devices and must

• be supported and validated by a specific use case with a proposed customer,
• produce outputs to support the broader use of CHERI-enabled devices by businesses and software development communities

Applications must describe a credible and practical route to market to commercialise the developedCHERI-enabled device.

Project duration

Between 6 and 31 months

Must start by 1^st September 2025

End by 31^st March 2028

Award value

Projects must have:

·     have total costs up to £1.5 million, inclusive of VAT, for stage 1

·     have total costs between £500,000 and £3.5 million, inclusive of VAT, for stage 2

Eligibility criteria

• Projects must be led by an organisation of any size
• Contracts will be awarded to a single entity only
•  Subcontractors can be used for specialist skills and can be businesses, research organisations, research and technology organisations or the third sector(charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups)
• Applicant organisations must have an existing microcontroller or microprocessor system-on-chip device that they want to modify to be a CHERI-enabled device, or be currently developing, or have developed, aCHERI-enabled device and want to broaden its market applicability or accelerate its availability
• You must select whether you are VAT registered before entering your eligible project costs
• If you are VAT registered, you must enter your eligible project costs exclusive of VAT and your total eligible project costs inclusive of VAT must not exceed £5 million
• If you are not VAT registered, you must enter your eligible project costs exclusive of VAT and your total project costs must not exceed £5 million
• Your application must have at least50% of the contract value attributed directly and exclusively to R&D services, including solution exploration and design. R&D can also include prototyping and field-testing the product or service

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