This is the eighth edition of the CHERI instruction set architecture definition. Relative to v7, this document has a significantly updated abstract model (which includes capability compression, now no longer seen as an approximation of the abstract model), more fully describes CHERI-RISC-V, is synchronized with Arm’s Morello prototype, and includes significant discussion of micro-architectural aspects of CHERI.

My own contributions, for the curious, are mostly small and scattered across the document, and were almost all jointly done with other co-authors. Unsurprisingly, given my continued role as lead of the heap temporal safety effort in CHERI/CheriBSD, most of my focus has been on features relevant to that aspect of the system. These include the introduction of per-page capability-load barriers (in section 3.10.3) and the associated portions of the CHERI-RISC-V MMU capability control behaviors (5.3.10), an update to the experimental composition of CHERI with memory versioning (e.g., Arm MTE; D.6), documenting the experimental ephemeral capability mechanism for richer revocable capability flow control (D.4), documenting the experimental (but present in Arm’s Morello) indirect sentries (D.9), and a modest expansion of the historical context chapter (13).

The document is available at the official repository as UCAM-CL-TR-951 or by local mirror here.

BibTeX:

@TechReport{watson:cheriisav8,
  author  = {Watson, Robert N. M. and Neumann, Peter G. and Woodruff,
            Jonathan and Roe, Michael and Almatary, Hesham and Anderson,
            Jonathan and Baldwin, John and Barnes, Graeme and Chisnall, David
            and Clarke, Jessica and Davis, Brooks and Eisen, Lee and Filardo,
            Nathaniel Wesley and Grisenthwaite, Richard and Joannou,
            Alexandre and Laurie, Ben and Markettos, A. Theodore and Moore,
            Simon W. and Murdoch, Steven J. and Nienhuis, Kyndylan and
            Norton, Robert and Richardson, Alexander and Rugg, Peter and
            Sewell, Peter and Son, Stacey and Xia, Hongyan},
  title   = {{Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions: CHERI
            Instruction-Set Architecture (Version 8)}},
  year    = {2020},
  month   = {oct},
  url     = {https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-951.pdf},
  institution={University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory},
  number  = {UCAM-CL-TR-951}
}