  Side-channel attacks on microprocessors, like the RISC-V, exhibit security
vulnerabilities that lead to several design challenges. Hence, it is imperative
to study and analyze these security vulnerabilities comprehensively. In this
paper, we present a brief yet comprehensive study of the security
vulnerabilities in modern microprocessors with respect to side-channel attacks
and their respective mitigation techniques. The focus of this paper is to
analyze the hardware-exploitable side-channel attack using power consumption
and software-exploitable side-channel attacks to manipulate cache. Towards
this, we perform an in-depth analysis of the applicability and practical
implications of cache attacks on RISC-V microprocessors and their associated
challenges. Finally, based on the comparative study and our analysis, we
highlight some key research directions to develop robust RISC-V microprocessors
that are resilient to side-channel attacks.
