Mixed-signal ASICs provider, EnSilica, has been awarded a £5m by the UK government to develop quantum-resilient secure processor to protect critical national infrastructure.
The funding is part of a programme ‘Contract for Innovation’ by the UK Government’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), following a competitive process. This programme sits within a wider UK Government initiative to accelerate the commercialisation of advanced hardware security technologies, supported by up to £21 million of national investment. It reflects increasing emphasis on bringing robust, security-focused silicon to market at scale, such as Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions (CHERI) that represents a transformative hardware security architecture designed to mitigate memory safety vulnerabilities, one of the most significant sources of modern cyberattacks.
EnSilica’s commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) CHERI-compliant secure processor chip, developed under the contract, will target next-generation quantum-resilient applications requiring the highest levels of security and functional safety, with relevance across defence, industrial, automotive and aerospace markets. The device will feature a rich set of interfaces tailored for high-integrity industrial and automotive applications, supporting secure connectivity, advanced sensor integration and robust real-time control. It will be developed in line with ISO/SAE 21434 for automotive cybersecurity and ISO 26262 for functional safety, while also meeting the equivalent cybersecurity and functional safety requirements for industrial markets.The UK Government has identified CHERI as central to strengthening the security of future computing systems, and its continued funding aims to accelerate the development and adoption of secure CHERI-enabled chips with commercial relevance in critical national infrastructure use cases. This innovation aligns with the UK Government’s broader semiconductor strategy, supporting national resilience in cybersecurity and contributing to the growth of the UK’s semiconductor ecosystem.
The COTS chip will also include EnSilica’s latest Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC) accelerator IP, making the chip resilient to attacks from quantum computers; a new class of computing system that exploits the principles of quantum mechanics, enabling them to solve certain complex problems, such as cryptographic problems, exponentially faster than today’s processors.
Security analysts have raised quantum computers as an emerging security risk with parties capturing encrypted data, with the intention of decrypting it in the future when high-performance quantum computers become more available, a tactic known as ‘harvest now, decrypt later’. The deployment of PQC is therefore essential to future-proof secure processors and communications systems.
The PQC market is forecast1 to grow from $310m in 2024 to $9.4bn by 2033, representing a 45% CAGR and driven by regulation and long-lifecycle systems needing future-proof security.
