Trust in Fabrication

The necessity of Trust has been pressed upon the United States Department of Defense as a consequence of the globalization of microelectronics development and manufacturing. Many of the microelectronic devices used in DOD systems and much of the software used in the design of such systems are either manufactured overseas or otherwise have foreign influence on their development. Even when devices are designed in the US, they are commonly fabricated overseas. The urgent question is thus raised: how does the DOD trust the increasingly more complex microelectronic devices fielded in critical systems? Given the massive scale of the global shift to non-U.S. microelectronics fabrication, it is prohibitively expensive for DOD to solve this trend exclusively through the use of Trusted Foundries and U.S.-only design and manufacturing facilities. Luna Innovations Incorporated has an arsenal of proven tools that provide trust in the development tools and manufacturing chain of FPGA devices. In this project, Luna will extend those capabilities to robustly support trust evaluation of Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) created by untrusted fabrication facilities. Luna has been involved in Trust research for seven years as a prime contractor on both Trust-related SBIRs as well as the ongoing DARPA Trust BAA.