Edge Devices Require New Security Approaches


The diversity of connected devices and chips at the edge — the vaguely defined middle ground between the end point and the cloud — is significantly widening the potential attack surface and creating more opportunities for cyberattacks. The edge build-out has been underway for at least the past half-decade, largely driven by an explosion in data and increasing demands to process that data... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


The U.S. Department of Commerce and Texas Instruments (TI) signed a non-binding preliminary memorandum of terms to provide up to $1.6 billion in CHIPS Act funding towards TI’s investment of over $18 billion for three 300mm semiconductor wafer fabs under construction in Texas and Utah. TI also expects to get about $6 billion to $8 billion from the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Investmen... » read more

CHERI RISC-V: HW Extension for Conditional Capabilities


A technical paper titled “Mon CHÈRI <3 Adapting Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC with Conditional Capabilities” was published by researchers at Ericsson Security Research, Université Libre de Bruxelles, and KU Leuven. Abstract: "Up to 10% of memory-safety vulnerabilities in languages like C and C++ stem from uninitialized variables. This work addresses the prevalence and lack of ade... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


The U.S. Department of Commerce and Amkor Technology signed a deal to provide up to $400 million in funding, under the CHIPS and Science Act, to build a previously announced end-to-end advanced packaging plant. The combined funding is expected to total about $2 billion. The new facility will add some 2,000 jobs in Peoria, Arizona. The SK hynix Board approved its Yongin Semiconductor Cluster... » read more

The Value Of Innovation


This week's Design Automation Conference is all about the new things that are going on in the industry, both challenges and opportunities. By this time this blog goes live, I will have moderated a panel about why EDA has not been open to disruption. While preparing for that, a number of thoughts emerged in my mind. First, we have to remember that EDA is a business whose role is to support th... » read more

RISC-V Verification: From Simulation To Formal


Axiomise's Nicky Khodadad and Ashish Darbari discuss simulation and the need for formal verification and RISC-V, including why simulation-based verification is inadequate to find all the bugs in a design and how formal verification can help with bug hunting for corner-case bugs and exhaustive proofs of bug absence. » read more

An LLM Approach For Large-Scale SoC Security Verification And Policy Generation (U. of Florida)


A technical paper titled “SoCureLLM: An LLM-driven Approach for Large-Scale System-on-Chip Security Verification and Policy Generation” was published by researchers at the University of Florida. Abstract: "Contemporary methods for hardware security verification struggle with adaptability, scalability, and availability due to the increasing complexity of the modern system-on-chips (SoCs). ... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


BAE Systems and GlobalFoundries are teaming up to strengthen the supply of chips for national security programs, aligning technology roadmaps and collaborating on innovation and manufacturing. Focus areas include advanced packaging, GaN-on-silicon chips, silicon photonics, and advanced technology process development. Onsemi plans to build a $2 billion silicon carbide production plant in the ... » read more

Rowhammer Bit Flips On A High-End RISC-V CPU (ETH Zurich)


A new technical paper titled "RISC-H: Rowhammer Attacks on RISC-V" was published by researchers at ETH Zurich.  RISC-H will be presented at DRAMSec (co-located with ISCA 2024) Abstract: "The first high-end RISC-V CPU with DDR4 support has been released just a few months ago. There are currently no Rowhammer studies on RISC-V devices and it is unclear whether it is possible to compromise ... » read more

When To Expect Domain-Specific AI Chips


The chip industry is moving toward domain-specific computation, while artificial intelligence (AI) is moving in the opposite direction, creating a gap that could force significant changes in how chips and systems are architected in the future. Behind this split is the amount of time it takes to design hardware and software. In the 18 months since ChatGPT was launched on the world, there has ... » read more

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