CCC to Convene Workshop on Software Assurance Methodologies and Trustworthy Semiconductor Design and Manufacture
WASHINGTON, D.C., December 13, 2012
On January 15-16, 2013 the Computing Community Consortium will bring together academic and industry experts from both the programming language and semiconductor design/manufacture communities to share and discuss challenges to securing the semiconductor manufacturing process and strategies. Click here to view the workshop webpage.
Ensuring that a computer chip or other semiconductor-based component does exactly what it the customer wants it to do, and nothing else, is becoming more challenging. Feature sizes continue to shrink and are measured in nanometers, circuits are more complex, and design and manufacture involves a supply chain typically comprising many businesses worldwide. Threats range from improper performance or early failure to allowing access to those with malicious intent.
Semiconductor design and manufacture depends on a "pipeline of tools," with each tool outputting something that is closer to describing what is actually produced and sold. One form of supply-chain attack involves corrupting one or more stages of this tools pipeline, so that the output of the pipeline exhibits undesirable functionality.
Over the last two decades, the programming languages community has addressed closely related problems with solutions such as "proof carrying code" and "certifying compilation" that derive from formal methods. Work in "compiler correctness" also is relevant. By analogy, semiconductor supply-chain attack might be frustrated if both the artifact and an analysis are transmitted between successive pipeline stages, with the analysis being updated by each stage. The updates would establish that properties checked by analysis in prior pipeline stages are preserved in the current pipeline stage. That is, each pipeline stage performs a kind of refinement, and checks that the refinement does not invalidate properties that previous stages validated. At the final stage, an accompanying analysis would rationalize the role of each element in the output of the pipeline.
This workshop is organized and sponsored by the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), National Science Foundation (NSF), and the CCC.
After the workshop, a report outlining the problems and areas of research that have the potential to lead to solutions will be created.
About the CCC: The Computing Community Consortium (CCC; http://cra.org/ccc) was established in fall 2006 under a Cooperative Agreement between the Computing Research Association (CRA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). A standing committee of CRA, the CCC seeks to mobilize the computing research community to debate long-range challenges and build consensus around specific research visions. The CCC specifically pursues the next big computing ideas that will define the future of the field, attract the very best talent, and catalyze research investment and public support in the long term.
About the CRA: The Computing Research Association (CRA; http://cra.org/) was established 40 years ago and has members at more than 220 North American academic, industrial, and government research entities. Its mission is to strengthen research and advance education in computing fields, expand opportunities for women and minorities, and improve public and policymaker understanding of the importance of computing and computing research in society.
For more information: Contact Kenneth Hines, Program Associate at the Computing Community Consortium: khines@cra.org; 202-266-2936.
