Virtualizing FPGAs For Multiple Cloud Users


Cloud computing has become the new computing paradigm. For cloud computing, virtualization is necessary to enable isolation between users, high flexibility and scalability, high security, and maximized utilization of hardware resources. Since 2017, because of the advantages of programmability, low latency, and high energy efficiency, FPGA has been widely adopted into cloud computing. Amazon ... » read more

Challenges Of Using The Cloud For IC Design


The ‘cloud’ is so ubiquitous that perhaps even your grandmother has heard about it. There are advertisements on TV with various vendors touting their cloud offerings. The cloud is ideal for eCommerce and SaaS (Software as a Service) offerings, as the elasticity on demand provides a convenient way to scale up when demand is high and scale down when it is low. Yet the design community has ... » read more

Making Sense Of New Edge-Inference Architectures


New edge-inference machine-learning architectures have been arriving at an astounding rate over the last year. Making sense of them all is a challenge. To begin with, not all ML architectures are alike. One of the complicating factors in understanding the different machine-learning architectures is the nomenclature used to describe them. You’ll see terms like “sea-of-MACs,” “systolic... » read more

Water System Hack And The Implications For Hardware Security


Last month we talked about the SolarWinds hack and now this month another disturbing attack has taken place – this time on a water supply system in Florida. Unfortunately, these types of attacks are becoming more frequent, giving us all pause as to how secure the systems that serve our everyday life really are. What lessons can we take from this recent attack that we can implement to make thi... » read more

Auto OEMs Face New Competitive Threats


Automotive design and manufacturing are undergoing a fundamental shift to the left as cars increasingly are electrified and chips take over more functions formerly done by mechanical parts, setting the stage for massive disruption across a supply chain that has been in place for decades. The success of Tesla — a company that had never actually built a chip or a car — was both a surprise ... » read more

Making Vehicle Electronics Safe With ISO 26262 Compliance


There are many semiconductor applications with high demands on safety, including spaceborne systems, nuclear power plants, and embedded medical devices. But automotive electronics are probably foremost in most peoples’ minds when they think about safe operation under all conditions. The advent of fully autonomous vehicles is responsible for much of this attention. Like other safety-critical a... » read more

Keeping Key Management Clear And Physical


Fundamental to all digital security systems is the ability to turn sensitive data into what looks like random incomprehensible jibberish and turn it back again into the same original information. But that is not all there is to it. You should be able to do that second bit of getting the original text only if you are allowed to do so. A classic way to deal with this problem is by using another s... » read more

Security Provisioning Moves Out Of The Factory


Security credentials traditionally have been provisioned during chip manufacturing, often as a final part of the testing process. That's starting to change. Logistics management can be improved by pushing that process out — even as far as the on-boarding process. And simpler on-boarding can hide most of the details from the user. “The IT approach to provisioning IoT devices has primar... » read more

Self-Driving Cars In San Francisco


You probably have heard that Waymo has completely driverless (no safety driver) taxis serving Phoenix. 600 of them. But you can't go and buy one. Why is that? Paul Graham, the founder of the incubator Y Combinator, is celebrated for many reasons, but two things he has said have become mantra in the startup world: Build something people want. Do things that don't scale. When it comes ... » read more

A Machine-Learning-Resistant 3D PUF with 8-layer Stacking Vertical RRAM and 0.014% Bit Error Rate Using In-Cell Stabilization Scheme for IoT Security Applications


Abstract: "In this work, we propose and demonstrate a multi-layer 3-dimensional (3D) vertical RRAM (VRRAM) PUF with in-cell stabilization scheme to improve both cost efficiency and reliability. An 8-layer VRRAM array was manufactured with excellent uniformity and good endurance of >10 7 . Apart from the variation in RRAM resistance, enhanced randomness is obtained thanks to the parasitic IR... » read more

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