OpenCCA: An Open Framework to Enable Arm CCA Research

Abstract: Confidential computing has gained traction across major architectures with Intel TDX, AMD SEV-SNP, and Arm CCA. Unlike TDX and SEV-SNP, a key challenge in researching Arm CCA is the absence of hardware support, forcing researchers to develop ad-hoc performance prototypes on non-CCA Arm boards. This approach leads to duplicated efforts, inconsistent performance comparisons, and high barriers to entry. To address this, we present OpenCCA, an open research platform that enables the execution of CCA-bound code on commodity Armv8.2 hardware. By systematically adapting the software stack -- including bootloader, firmware, hypervisor, and kernel -- OpenCCA emulates CCA operations for performance evaluation while preserving functional correctness. We demonstrate its effectiveness with typical life-cycle measurements and case-studies inspired by prior CCA-based papers on a easily available Armv8.2 Rockchip board that costs $250.