How Secure Are Analog Circuits?


The move toward multi-die assemblies and the increasing value of sensor data at the edge are beginning to focus attention and raise questions about security in analog circuits. In most SoC designs today, security is almost entirely a digital concern. Security requirements in digital circuits are well understood, particularly in large data centers and at the upper end of edge computing, which... » read more

Mobile Chip Challenges In The AI Era


Leading smart phone vendors are struggling to keep pace with the rising compute and power demands of localized generative AI, standard phone functions, and the need to move more data back and forth between handsets and the cloud. In addition to edge functions, such as facial recognition and other on-device apps, phones must accommodate a continuous stream of new communications protocols, and... » read more

Security Risks Mount For Aerospace, Defense Applications


Supply chain and hardware security vulnerabilities affect all industries, but they pose additional risks for the defense sector. Over-manufacturing and re-manufacturing allow chips from friendly nations to end up in the weapons of adversaries. And side-channel attacks such as power analysis or fault injection, as well as internet-based distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, provide a mea... » read more

Radiation, Temperature, Power Challenges For Chips In Space


Mission-critical hardware used in space is not supposed to fail at all, because lives may be lost in addition to resources, availability, performance, and budgets. For space applications, failure can occur due to a range of factors, including the weather on the day of launch, human error, environmental conditions, unexpected or unknown hazards and degradation of parts to chemical factors, aging... » read more

Extra Safety Measures Needed For Aerospace ICs


Aerospace safety requirements and standards vary depending on whether a spacecraft is manned or unmanned, and how crucial the mission is. The defense contractors designing these spacecraft take various approaches to functional safety based on how critical a component is for the mission to succeed. While losing a few images during an Earth-bound observation may not matter, losing a satellite ... » read more

Cyber Threats Multiply With Commercial Chiplets


The commercialization of chiplets will significantly boost the potential for attacks on hardware, requiring a much broader set of security measures and processes at every level of the supply chain, including traceability from initial design to end of life. Much progress has been made in recent years on security measures, including everything from identifying unusual data traffic inside a chi... » read more

Smarter Cars, Higher Stakes


Artificial intelligence is turbocharging automotive innovation, but it's also unleashing a tangle of high stakes risks that engineers and security experts are scrambling to contain. The push to embed AI deep into today’s vehicles is changing how cars are built, how they handle the road, and how they keep passengers safe. But as onboard intelligence expands, so do the risks. AI systems that... » read more

Security Power Requirements Are Growing


Determining how much power to budget for security in a chip design is a complex calculation. It starts with a risk assessment of the cost of a breach and the number of possible attack vectors, and whether security is active or passive. Different forms of root of trust and cryptography have different power costs. Different systems could require tradeoffs between performance and security, whic... » read more

Stakes Are High For Aerospace, Defense IC Designs


Chips destined for the skies or armed forces need extra everything. They require higher layers of abstraction to simulate all the moving parts in the field, high-reliability testing for harsh environments, in addition to system-level test. They also need radiation-hardening and ceramic materials for space, extra safety layers, and advanced security techniques. As in the automotive sector, th... » read more

Chip Aging Opens Up New Attack Vectors


The longer a piece of silicon is out in the field the more prone it becomes to a cyberattack, raising questions about the optimal longevity of circuits and the impact of extending their lifetimes. This is particularly challenging for safety- and mission-critical applications, where the cost of development can run as high as $100 million for some of the most complex designs. Chipmakers want t... » read more

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