Enhancement of Commercial Grade VLSI Chips into Industrial Grade using a Novel Thermal Monitoring and Control Technique

The aerospace and military applications demanding low cost, high performance, reliable computing chips at low operating temperature environment. In the proposed work a cost-effective solution has developed with novel mechanism to enhance use of commercial grade VLSI chips for industrial grade applications. Here the commercial grade FPGA worked satisfactorily beyond its lower temperature range typically up to - 15°C. A thermoelectric cooler is used for temperature grade extension along with temperature sensor and TDC. A fully digital onchip temperature sensor based on delay line is implemented on FPGA. The TDC used, provides a digital equivalent of variation in delay due to change in temperature with time resolution of 213ps and temperature resolution of 0.06°C throughout the operating range.

Risks Analysis and Mitigation Technique in EDA Sector

This chapter describes how as the semiconductor industry is growing at a streaming pace, it comprises a number of global business entities. The industry includes the designing of the VLSI chips, manufacturing of those chips, system integration and the distribution of the VLSI chip. With this the industry has raised the bar among its vendors to provide best possible IC solutions and a highly secure product. The authors thus present this chapter in calculating views on risk involved in this area which are prone to security risks and at the same time focuses on the VLSI supply chain with references to a recent survey that illustrates various ways to handle those risks. In the absence of an effective security mechanism, a varlet here viz. an intellectual property (IP)provider or an integrated circuit design industry, an EDA company, a foundry lab, a distributor of chips or a system integrator, may easily lead to design IP theft or tampering with a designed IC. Since these risks compromise the security system for the VLSI chips, this leads to have a sound security system for an apt risk management.

Applications and Techniques for 2D Picosecond Imaging for Circuit Analysis

In this paper, we present the latest results obtained with a 2D Picosecond Imaging Circuit Analysis (PICA) camera with enhanced Near InfraRed (NIR) sensitivity [1] for taking 2D Time Resolved Emission (TRE). We will discuss key applications where the time-resolved imaging capability is very effective in reducing the debug time and improving the interpretation of the failure signatures of several VLSI chips. Besides conventional chip diagnostics, specific focus will be dedicated to new areas of applications, such as security and reverse engineering [2]. We will also discuss spectral analysis and other techniques that can be used to extract valuable information from the PICA dataset.