ISCF digital security by design - software ecosystem development

Overview

The Digital Security by Design challenge will work with Innovate UK and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), both part of UK Research and Innovation, to invest up to £8 million in research and development projects. This funding is from the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF).

Scope

The aim of this competition is to fund a range of projects that work to enrich and expand the DSbD software ecosystem prior to the availability of commercial hardware. Projects will leverage the DSbD Technology Hardware Prototype, also known as Morello Board, to work on a focused area within a selected and specified software stack or an Operating System (OS) or a developer toolchain used by a digital system.

Your application must focus on either of the following:

enriching the evolving Morello Stacks
expanding overall support and make available additional DSbD enabled software stacks, toolchains and components

All projects are required to evaluate the performance impact of using DSbD technologies based on specified performance requirements and objectives while taking into account the expected maturity of the specified software stack or OS or developer toolchain. Projects are therefore expected to take a flexible approach in their workplans as appropriate.

Projects will be working with the Morello board prototype that uses an Arm 64-bit Neoverse-based processor that supports the DSbD technologies and provides the concepts of the Capability Hardware Enhanced Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) Instructions (CHERI) protection model.

You must specify your use and need for the Morello boards within the project. You must include scenario analysis between the requirement for the availability of on-premise boards in a limited number, along with any requirement for cloud-based virtualised access to potentially a larger number of boards. Quantities and virtual access considerations for each respective scenario must be specified.

You must show how your project will deliver value and benefit to application developers and the growth of the DSbD software ecosystem. You must describe the availability of project outputs, along with how and whether you will be making them available to others using a Morello board, as software upstreaming would not be feasible. You must describe your route to impact on how project results can be exploited on the availability of commercial hardware.

During your project’s duration, you are expected to interact with relevant groups developing DSbD technologies, and to engage at the DSbD networking workshops organised by the ‘Discribe’ DSbD Social Science Hub+ project.

Innovate UK want to fund a portfolio of projects, that will balance contributions including across:

businesses and research organisations
software stacks and components
enriching the evolving Morello Stacks and expanding overall support

Specific Themes

We will fund applications that will realise the benefits of DSbD technologies for software development within:

OS and developer toolchains, for example, compilers, linkers, debuggers, verifiers
shared libraries and dependent packages
language runtimes
developer frameworks or middleware
other platform services across Linux-based or other open-source operating systems

Eligibility

Your project must:

request total grant from £200,000 to £1.4 million
start on or after 1 April 2022
end by 31 December 2024
last between 12 and 30 months
carry out all of its project work in the UK
intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

To lead a project or work alone your organisation must be a UK registered business of any size or a research organisation.

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.

You cannot use any application previously submitted to UKRI to apply for this competition.

Innovate UK will not award you funding if you have:

failed to exploit a previously funded project
an overdue independent accountant’s report
failed to comply with grant terms and conditions
an open, outstanding ResearchFish sanction

Funding

Innovate UK have allocated up to £8 million to fund research and development projects in this competition.

For research organisation led projects, 100% of project costs can be claimed at 80% FEC.

If the majority of your organisation’s work on the project is commercial or economic, your funding request must not exceed the limits below. These limits apply even if your organisation normally acts non-economically.

For industry led projects, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:

up to 80% if you are a micro or small organisation
up to 80% if you are a medium-sized organisation
up to 50% if you are a large organisation

Exclusions

Innovate UK are not funding projects that are:

developments which do not deliver benefit to a software developer
not making use of, enable software targeting or benefitting from capability enabled hardware as made available by the Morello board
requiring enhancement of additional hardware capabilities, for example, accelerators
developments that do not clearly require a platform level processor, for example, it supports a memory management unit
dependent on export performance, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product

Interested in applying for this competition?

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ISCF digital security by design – software ecosystem development