Student from NSU Faculty of Information Technology Receives Award at Young Scientists School in Sochi

Viktor Tumilevich, a 3rd-year student of the Faculty of Information Technology (FIT) at NSU, received an award at the School of Young Scientists (SYS), which took place from September 21 to 28 in Sochi as part of the Russian forum “Microelectronics.” This is a prestigious scientific-industrial event where young researchers present their works and discuss them with renowned scientists and leading industry experts.

Viktor presented a report titled “Building a Verifiable Bootstrap Chain for the RISC-V Architecture.” The project was carried out at the YADRO laboratory at NSU as part of a student project under the supervision of Alexander Alexandrovich Vlasov.

— RISC-V is an open processor architecture that allows developing custom processors without licensing restrictions on the instruction set. The goal of my project is to build a verifiable chain from a minimal trusted code base to a C compiler capable of compiling itself. This helps to reduce dependence on unverified third-party programs used in development, — said Viktor Tumilevich.

As part of the work, it was possible to collect the chain up to the TinyCC compiler, confirm its fixed self-compilation, as well as detect deliberately introduced infections in the compiler, and also its execution on a real RISC-V device.

According to the student, participating in SCHMU helped to look at the project in a new way and outline the next steps for its development.

— I liked that the School of Young Scientists presented a whole range of very advanced topics, united by microelectronics and system software. It was interesting to communicate with participants working on related tasks and to look at the problem from different perspectives. The feedback on the project was especially valuable: I received many comments and ideas from leading experts for its further development. The round tables were also memorable, where other research and current industry issues were discussed. Overall, the event was a good opportunity to showcase my work at such a high level, exchange experiences, and meet colleagues from related fields. — Viktor shared.

Scientific project supervisor Alexander Vlasov, PhD, head of the TOP IT educational program and the YADRO laboratory at NSU, noted that the task is complex and requires knowledge from a wide range of disciplines in computer science — from program execution principles on a computing device to the architecture of the processor, compiler, and much more.

— It is especially important that during the learning process, students were able to personally touch the boundary of the known and acquire new knowledge. I hope this work will continue in the form of a scientific publication in a reputable journal., — said Alexander Vlasov.

He also emphasized the importance of having the results recognized at Russia’s leading conference on microelectronics, which was attended by the best young scientists and students from all the leading universities working in this field — MIPT, SPbU, MEPhI, HSE, MIREA, and others.

“This indicates that we set current tasks for students through cooperation with industrial partners, and the level of education allows them to solve such problems already in the second year of the Bachelor’s program at the Faculty of Information Technologies,” added the scientific advisor.

From a scientific perspective, the obtained result, thanks to the use of the open RISC-V architecture, allows shifting the root of trust: from the finished computing device to the lithographer manufacturing this device.

On the recommendation of the industrial partner, YADRO company, a unique educational case will be created based on the work done for a top-level IT educational program “Industrial Software Engineering Technologies.” It will enable a high-level integration of knowledge from most of the core subjects of the first and second years — “Imperative Programming,” “Digital Platforms,” “Operating Systems,” and others — as well as prepare a foundation for mastering the third and fourth-year disciplines on software systems architecture and cybersecurity.