Enhancing DFT Security in Chiplet-Based Systems With Encryption and Integrity Checking

Abstract

Chiplet-based chips are the natural evolution of traditional 2D SoCs. In the future, off-the-shelf chiplets are expected to represent an important component of the semiconductor industry. The IEEE Std 1838(TM)-2019 design-for-testability (DFT) standard enable testing of stacked chiplets from multiple vendors. However, the shared DFT network threatens the confidentiality and integrity of test data and other sensitive information. This paper addresses the security concerns associated with DFT infrastructures in chiplet-based systems. We discuss the necessity of securing DFT infrastructures to prevent unauthorized access and malicious activities. Furthermore, we propose a hardware countermeasure that combines encryption and encoding to secure communication over the DFT network. Results show that the DFT can be protected from misbehavior from malicious chiplets on the stack, scan-based attacks, and brute force attacks with minimal overhead in terms of area and test time. The proposed solution causes less than 1% area overhead on designs composed of more than 5 million gates and less than 1% test time overhead for typical DFT implementations.