SilverSoc MVP

A proof-of-concept SOC (Security Operations Centre) dashboard built on top of the SilverCore UI engine. Written entirely in pure C with a live ncurses terminal GUI.

What is this?

SilverSoc MVP demonstrates the SilverCore UI framework applied to a real-world security operations use case. It simulates a live SOC environment, ingesting log events, tracking active threats, visualising a network topology, and rendering everything at a target of 60 fps inside a standard terminal window.

This is a POC. There is no real network traffic or SIEM backend; all events are synthetically generated to stress-test the rendering pipeline and validate the SilverCore UI primitives under load.

Architecture

silvercore-kernel/
└── apps/
    └── soc_dashboard/
        └── soc_dashboard.c     # entire dashboard, ~1100 lines, pure C11

Everything lives in a single translation unit on top of the kernel headers:

Component	Role
Event generator	Background pthread producing log events and alerts at a configurable rate
Log ring buffer	Lock-free SPSC ring; holds the last 8192 log entries
Threat tracker	Fixed-size alert table sorted by severity; flash-animates new arrivals
Network graph	100-node, 200-edge adjacency list rendered as ASCII canvas
Renderer	ncurses-based; 4 panels + status bar, dirty-flag updates, 60 fps rAF loop
Stats overlay	On-demand popup showing session metrics and a PASS/FAIL verdict

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Building

Requires: gcc (or clang), cmake >= 3.16, ncurses-devel

cmake -S silvercore-kernel -B silvercore-kernel/build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DSC_TESTS=OFF
cmake --build silvercore-kernel/build --target soc_dashboard -j$(nproc)

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Running

./silvercore-kernel/build/soc_dashboard

Terminal must be at least 120 columns × 40 rows for the full layout. Resize the window before launching for best results.

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Controls

Key	Action
s	Toggle session stats overlay
p	Pause / resume the event generator
q	Quit (final session report printed to stdout)

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Dashboard Layout

┌─[ SilverCore SOC Dashboard ]────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  FPS: 60.0   p99: 3.4ms [PASS]   Ring: 1024/8192   Queue: 0   Alerts: 12   │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────┤
│  LIVE LOG STREAM                            │  ACTIVE THREATS               │
│  AGE   SRC IP           DST IP      EVENT  │  #01  CRITICAL  Lateral Move  │
│  ...                                        │  #02  HIGH      Port Scan     │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────┤  ...                          │
│  NETWORK GRAPH  (100 nodes, 200 edges)      │                               │
│  h . e . h . X . h . e ...                 │                               │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────┘
│  FPS: 60.0  p99: 3.40ms [PASS]  Ring: 12%  Queue: 0  Alerts: 12  Frame: 360│
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Panel key:

Symbol / Colour	Meaning
h cyan	Internal host node
e green	External node
X white-on-red	Suspicious node
.	Network edge midpoint
Red row	CRITICAL severity log or alert
Amber row	HIGH severity

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Session Stats Overlay (s)

Press s to open a centred popup showing:

• Live FPS and p99 frame time with PASS/FAIL verdict
• Total frames rendered
• Log ring fill percentage and total writes
• Task queue depth
• Alert breakdown by severity (CRITICAL / HIGH / MEDIUM / LOW)
• Suspicious network node count
• Generator state (RUNNING / PAUSED)

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Performance Targets

Metric	Target	Typical
Frame rate	60 fps	59–60 fps
p99 frame time	< 20 ms	3–5 ms
Log ring size	8192 entries
Network nodes	100
Network edges	200

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SilverCore UI: POC Notes

SilverCore Kernel: https://github.com/amalxloop/silvercore-kernel

SilverCore is a software-rasterised UI kernel designed for embedded and systems-level environments where no window system is available. Its primitives (arena allocator, dirty-flag widget tree, ring buffers, fixed-size layout engine) are proven here against a continuous-update workload representative of a real SOC feed.

Key findings from this POC:

• The arena allocator eliminates per-frame heap pressure entirely.
• Dirty-flag rendering keeps ncurses refresh() calls sub-millisecond even at 100 nodes.
• The lock-free SPSC ring sustains >200 events/sec without blocking the render thread.
• p99 frame time stays well under the 20 ms budget on a single core.