Fabrication Security and Trust of Domain-Specific ASIC Processors

Abstract

This paper describes our experience developing techniques to protect embedded intellectual property (IP) while an ASIC is being fabricated in an untrusted foundry. We created a customizable, high performance, domain-specific ASIC processor architecture, which we showed to be effective in protecting IP and mitigating the expense and inflexibility associated with using ASIC technology. Using an ASIC Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) accelerator as a test case, we have investigated various obfuscation options and their practicality in ensuring the trust and security of the processor when it is fabricated. The result is a processor architecture that incorporates split fabrication, configurable switch arrays and fabrics, programmable controllers, and configurable functional kernels. We have introduced a quantitative metric to gauge the effectiveness of application obfuscation for a domain-specific processor during fabrication.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Oct 30, 2016
Accession Number
AD1032251

Entities

People

  • Karen M. Gettings
  • Michael Vai
  • Theodore M. Lyszczarz

Organizations

  • MIT Lincoln Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics
  • Electronic Warfare
  • Engineered Resilient Systems
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Algorithms
  • Application-Specific Integrated Circuits
  • Embedded Systems
  • Engineering
  • Fabrication
  • Field Programmable Gate Arrays
  • Integrated Circuits
  • Intellectual Property
  • Reverse Engineering
  • Semiconductor Manufacturing
  • Semiconductors
  • Signal Processing
  • Signals Intelligence
  • Synthetic Aperture Radar
  • United States Government
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
  • Vulnerability

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Cybersecurity.
  • Integrated Circuit Design and Technology.
  • Parallel and Distributed Computing.