A novel design-for-security (DFS) architecture to prevent unauthorized IC overproduction

Abstract

Due to the prohibitive costs of semiconductor manufacturing, most system-on-chip (SoC) design companies outsource their production to offshore foundries. An untrusted foundry can manufacture and sell additional unauthorized chips for profit in violation of their contract. This overproduction can not only cause significant loss of revenue to the designer, but may also have national security implications in case of sensitive designs. Over the years, researchers have proposed different design obfuscation techniques by modifying the underlying functionality to prevent this unauthorized overproduction of chips. An untrusted foundry/assembly cannot sell chips unless they are activated. A chip works properly only when it is activated with a key, which needs to be kept secret from any adversary. However, Boolean satisfiability (SAT)-based algorithms have shown to efficiently break key based obfuscation methods. In this paper, we present a novel secure cell design for implementing design-for-security (DFS) infrastructure to prevent of leaking the key to an adversary under any circumstances. Importantly, our design does not limit the testability of the chip in any way, including post-silicon validation and debug.