A Blockchain Technology Approach for the Security and Trust of the IC Supply Chain

Abstract

In trying to lower the costs of integrated circuit (IC) fabrication, the IC supply chain is becoming global. However, if the foundry or the supply chain, to which the fabrication process is outsourced, is not reliable or trustworthy, it may result in the quality of ICs being compromised. There have been well documented instances of counterfeit chips, and chips secretly implanted with Trojans, creeping into the supply chain. With the above background in mind, we propose to strengthen the supply chain process by attempting to use a very secure technique which has been widely used in many other fields, namely, the blockchain technology. Blockchain, first introduced for the security and mining of bitcoins, is one of the most trusted security techniques in today’s world. In this paper, we propose a blockchain technology enabled ‘smart contract’ approach for ensuring the security and trust of these ICs by tracking down the stage of alteration at which the chip may have been compromised in the IC supply chain.