Portmeirion

Project Portmeirion aims to explore hardware-software co-design for security in the Azure general-purpose compute stack. We are working with major CPU vendors and academic collaborators to design new security features at both the architectural and microarchitectural level. This includes hardware-enforced memory safety for systems programming languages, fine-grained sandboxing, scalable enclave technologies, and infrastructure programming languages that can take advantage of all of these features.

The project includes Microsoft Research’s engagement with the Digital Security by Design Industrial Strategy Challenge fund (opens in new tab). This programme aims to provide hardware-backed solutions to the largest cybersecurity challenges facing the world today. We are actively collaborating with ARM, the University of Cambridge, and others on the CHERI (opens in new tab) architecture extensions as embodied by ARM’s Morello development platform.

See also related projects; Project Verona and Project Everest.