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Security Assessment of Interposer-based Chiplet Integration

Cryptography and Security 2020-10-27 v1 Hardware Architecture

Abstract

With transistor scaling reaching its limits, interposer-based integration of dies (chiplets) is gaining traction. Such an interposer-based integration enables finer and tighter interconnect pitch than traditional system-on-packages and offers two key benefits: 1. It reduces design-to-market time by bypassing the time-consuming process of verification and fabrication. 2. It reduces the design cost by reusing chiplets. While black-boxing of the slow design stages cuts down the design time, it raises significant security concerns. We study the security implications of the emerging interposer-based integration methodology. The black-boxed design stages deploy security measures against hardware Trojans, reverse engineering, and intellectual property piracy in traditional systems-on-chip (SoC) designs and hence are not suitable for interposer-based integration. We propose using functionally diverse chiplets to detect and thwart hardware Trojans and use the inherent logic redundancy to shore up anti-piracy measures. Our proposals do not rely on access to the black-box design stages. We evaluate the security, time and cost benefits of our plan by implementing a MIPS processor, a DCT core, and an AES core using various IPs from the Xilinx CORE GENERATOR IP catalog, on an interposer-based Xilinx FPGA.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2010.13155,
  title  = {Security Assessment of Interposer-based Chiplet Integration},
  author = {Mohammed Shayan and Kanad Basu and Ramesh Karri},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.13155},
  year   = {2020}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T19:37:59.743Z