New Uses For AI In Chips


Artificial intelligence is being deployed across a number of new applications, from improving performance and reducing power in a wide range of end devices to spotting irregularities in data movement for security reasons. While most people are familiar with using machine learning and deep learning to distinguish between cats and dogs, emerging applications show how this capability can be use... » read more

Prefetch Side Channels Undermine the Isolation Between User and Kernel Space on AMD CPUs


This new technical paper titled "AMD Prefetch Attacks through Power and Time" is from researchers at Graz University of Technology and CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security. Note, this is a prepublication paper for the USENIX Security Symposium in Boston in August 2022.   This paper includes countermeasures and mitigation strategies, and the paper indicates that the findings were di... » read more

Week In Review, Manufacturing, Test


Post-CHIPS Act Micron is discussing a potential new fab that could employ thousands of workers, following the passage of the Chips and Science Act. Idaho is hoping it will be built near its headquarters facilities in Boise, but Micron hasn’t committed publicly. Rob Beard, senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary at Micron, told the Idaho Statesman the company is consi... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Pervasive computing, connectivity Semtech Corporation announced that it will acquire Sierra Wireless, an IoT services company. The acquisition will combine Semtech’s LoRa end nodes and cloud service with Sierra Wireless’ cellular capabilities. Telit will incorporate Thales’s cellular IoT products business under a new name Telit Cinterion, led by Telit. Telit Cinterion will be Californ... » read more

Customizing Processors


The design, verification, and implementation of a processor is the core competence of some companies, but others just want to whip up a small processor as quickly and cheaply as possible. What tools and options exist? Processors range from very small, simple cores that are deeply embedded into products to those operating at the highest possible clock speeds and throughputs in data centers. I... » read more

Distilling The Essence Of Four DAC Keynotes


Chip design and verification are facing a growing number of challenges. How they will be solved — particularly with the addition of machine learning — is a major question for the EDA industry, and it was a common theme among four keynote speakers at this month's Design Automation Conference. DAC has returned as a live event, and this year's keynotes involved the leaders of a systems comp... » read more

RETBLEED: New Spectre-BTI Attack (ETH Zurich)


New Spectre-BTI attack that "leaks arbitrary kernel memory." It's detailed in this research paper titled “RETBLEED: Arbitrary Speculative Code Execution with Return Instructions” from researchers at ETH Zürich. Mitigations are available. Abstract "Modern operating systems rely on software defenses against hardware attacks. These defenses are, however, as good as the assumptions they m... » read more

What Future Processors Will Look Like


Mark Papermaster, CTO at AMD, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to talk about architectural changes that are required as the benefits of scaling decrease, including chiplets, new standards for heterogeneous integration, and different types of memory. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: What does a processor look like in five years? Is it a bunch of chips in a package? I... » read more

Security Risks Widen With Commercial Chiplets


The commercialization of chiplets is expected to increase the number and breadth of attack surfaces in electronic systems, making it harder to keep track of all the hardened IP jammed into a package and to verify its authenticity and robustness against hackers. Until now this has been largely a non-issue, because the only companies using chiplets today — AMD, Intel, and Marvell — interna... » read more

Hertzbleed: A New Family of Side-Channel Attacks–Root Case: Dynamic Frequency Scaling


  New research paper titled "Hertzbleed: Turning Power Side-Channel Attacks Into Remote Timing Attacks on x86" from researchers at UT Austin, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and University of Washington can be found here. (preprint). This paper will be presented at the 31st USENIX Security Symposium (Boston, 10–12 August 2022). Summary explanation of the Hertzbleed ... » read more

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