Secure Architectures

The articles in this special section focus on secure computer architectures. Hardware is the bedrock on which all computing systems are built. Recently developed hardware ideas for enhancing the software security from both academia and industry hold significant promise to improve software security. At the same time, recent hardware attacks on current commodity hardware have shown hardware to be a weak foundation for building secure systems. As we enter Post-Moore’s Law era, there are significant questions surrounding what would make security techniques more practical. Thus, security is a first-order problem for computer architects today, and this special edition highlights a few compelling examples across the system stack. This issue contains four articles on various facets of secure architectures.