Arafin conducting research aimed at securing chiplet-based semiconductor manufacturing from untrusted supply chains

January 24, 2024 -- Md Tanvir Arafin, Assistant Professor, Cybersecurity Engineering, received funding for the project: "Securing Chiplet-based Semiconductor Manufacturing from Untrusted Supply Chains."

Monolithic integrated circuit (IC) design is reaching the physical limit to accommodate the ever-increasing demand of cramming more transistors in a chip. To address this, novel design primitives that move from monolithic design practices to heterogeneous integration of IC primitives in a 2.5 or 3D structure have emerged. For example, multiple chiplets (i.e., small, independent chips with defined functionalities) can be connected on a single substrate to create a high-density, high-performance integrated circuit. Chiplets usher in a new additive design paradigm in microelectronics, where chips from multiple vendors and process technologies are integrated efficiently with better yield and less wafer waste.

However, from a hardware security perspective, insecure supply chains introduce new vulnerabilities for chiplet-based technology, such as hardware Trojans and counterfeit tiles. 

Hence, Arafin and his group will design provable trust embedding techniques for counterfeit chiplet detection in this project. Additionally, they will develop novel Trojan identification methods using the built-in-peer-testing capabilities of chiplets connected on a shared Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) bus.   

Arafin received $50,000 from the Virginia Innovation Partnership Authority for this research. Funding began in Jan. 2024 and will end in Jan. 2025.

About George Mason University

George Mason University is Virginia's largest public research university. Located near Washington, D.C., Mason enrolls 38,000 students from 130 countries and all 50 states. Mason has grown rapidly over the last half-century and is recognized for its innovation and entrepreneurship, remarkable diversity and commitment to accessibility. Learn more at http://www.gmu.edu.