Inspiring trust in outsourced integrated circuit fabrication

摘要

The fabrication of integrated circuits (ICs) is typically outsourced to an external semiconductor foundry to reduce cost. However, this can come at the expense of trust. How can a designer ensure the integrity of the ICs fabricated by an external foundry? The talk will discuss a new approach for inspiring trust in outsourced IC fabrication by complementing the untrusted (outsourced) with an IC fabricated at a low-end but trusted foundry. This approach is referred to as split fabrication. We present two different ways in which split fabrication can be used to enhance security: logic obfuscation and verifiable ASICs.