Case Study: Arm achieves enhanced SoC visibility and security with Synopsys in‑chip PVT monitors

Enabling SoC Visibility for Future Secure Hardware Architectures with In-Chip Environmental Monitoring

Synopsys partnered with Arm on the UK-funded Morello research program to prototype a future secure SoC architecture. Facing growing data volumes and increasing attack surfaces, Arm needed embedded IP to detect and manage dynamic on‑chip conditions (temperature, voltage, and process variation) that can impact reliability and signal security breaches.

Synopsys provided a 7nm in‑chip PVT monitoring subsystem—three temperature sensors, four voltage monitors and a process detector—integrated into the Morello SoC and accessed via Cortex‑M software with configurable warning/shutdown thresholds. The deployment improved hotspot thermal visibility (±4 °C uncalibrated, ±1.2 °C calibrated), enabled lifetime stress analysis, supply optimization and process‑variation measurement across the die, and helped accelerate Arm’s development of future secure hardware architectures.

Arm