The composable data center platform Fungible unveiled earlier this year has a number of new approaches to computing infrastructure. Its users can scale compute, storage, and network resources independently, for example. It also relies on Fungible’s own accelerator processor, the Data Processing Unit, or DPU, to offload a lot of the system-management workload from the CPU.
Another aspect of the Fungible Data Center platform that’s relatively new to the data center market (although it’s been widely used in other areas) is its use of the naturally unique fingerprint of each processor, comprised of minute imperfections introduced in manufacturing, to make the system more secure. The approach is referred to as Physical Unclonable Function, or PUF.
Fungible uses hardware fingerprints to help secure against attackers swapping out hardware, either in the data center or along the supply chain and against attacks on the BIOS.
In addition to being a way to identify each piece of hardware, the fingerprints can be used as the basis of a private key and for authentication.
