A Formal Verification Method To Detect Timing Side Channels In MCU SoCs


A technical paper titled “A New Security Threat in MCUs – SoC-wide timing side channels and how to find them” was published by researchers at University of Kaiserslautern-Landau and Stanford University. Abstract: "Microarchitectural timing side channels have been thoroughly investigated as a security threat in hardware designs featuring shared buffers (e.g., caches) and/or parallelism b... » read more

NoC Obfuscation For Protecting Against Reverse Engineering Attacks (U. Of Florida)


A technical paper titled "ObNoCs: Protecting Network-on-Chip Fabrics Against Reverse-Engineering Attacks" was published by researchers at University of Florida. Abstract: "Modern System-on-Chip designs typically use Network-on-Chip (NoC) fabrics to implement coordination among integrated hardware blocks. An important class of security vulnerabilities involves a rogue foundry reverse-engineeri... » read more

Fault Awareness And Reliability Improvements In a Fault-Tolerant RISC-V SoC (HARV-SoC)


A technical paper titled “Enhancing Fault Awareness and Reliability of a Fault-Tolerant RISC-V System-on-Chip” was published by researchers at University of Montpellier and University of Vale do Itajaí. Abstract: "Recent research has shown interest in adopting the RISC-V processors for high-reliability electronics, such as aerospace applications. The openness of this architecture enables... » read more

Physically Aware NoCs


More functions, greater security risks, and increasingly complicated integration of IP and various components below 7nm is increasing the time and effort it takes to get a functioning chip out the door. In many of these devices, the network on chip is the glue between various components, but it can take up to 10% to 12% of the total area of the SoC. Andy Nightingale, vice president of product m... » read more

Designing for FPGA Accelerators


This research paper titled "High-Level Synthesis Hardware Design for FPGA-based Accelerators: Models, Methodologies, and Frameworks" was published by researchers at Università degli Studi di Trieste (Italy), Universidad Nacional de San Luis (Argentina), and the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (Italy). According to the paper's abstract, "This paper presents a survey ... » read more

A Holistic Approach To Energy-Efficient System-On-Chip (SoC) Design


It takes a great deal of energy to power the modern world, and demand grows every day. This is especially true for electronics, where ever increasing automation and more intelligent devices incessantly demand more power. Many applications that use chips face a variety of pressures for reduced power consumption and better energy efficiency. In response, the semiconductor and electronic design au... » read more

Where Do Memory Maps Come From?


A memory map is the bridge between a system-on-chip (SoC) and the firmware and software that is executed on it. Engineers may assume the map automatically appears, but the reality is much more involved. The union of hardware (HW) and software (SW) demands both planning and compromise. The outcome of this merger will not be fully realized until the magical day when the system comes to life. T... » read more

Simulation-Based Fault Analysis for Resilient System-On-Chip Design


Abstract: "Enhancing the reliability of the system is important for recent system-on-chip (SoC) designs. This importance has led to studies on fault diagnosis and tolerance. Fault-injection (FI) techniques are widely used to measure the fault-tolerance capabilities of resilient systems. FI techniques suffer from limitations in relation to environmental conditions and system features. Moreover,... » read more

Hyper-Convergence Is The New Normal For Digital Implementation


The era of smart-everything has led to a surge in the need for semiconductor devices across a myriad of traditional and novel applications. These applications demand high performance yet energy-efficient compute over blazing-fast networks to service trillions of edge devices that are constantly consuming and generating large amounts of data. This surge has invigorated system architects to innov... » read more

FPGA Prototyping: Supersizing Scale And Performance


Given the cost of re-spinning a system-on-chip (SoC), semiconductor companies have always looked for ways to verify and validate the SoC before tape-out. Prototyping using field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) became a key methodology as part of this pre-silicon verification and validation effort. Click here to read more. » read more

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