A look at our industry's challenges

Abstract

h OUR INDUSTRY FACES a complex myriad of potential problems and challenges across all mediums involving design and test, and the resulting solutions and research methods used to counter experience problems are even more varied and comprehensive. Thus, it makes sense for us at some point to introduce a variety of some of the most current and striking areas of contemporary research and experimentation to our readers. While a narrower focus on selected themes is certainly a top priority for us, the reality is that our industry is varied in the truest sense of the word, and the occasional wide-issue can serve immense benefits in representing this point. This is what we have compiled in this issue; a compendium of recent, highly relevant selections that runs the gamut of problems and solutions in design and test, not only from an interindustry standpoint ranging from Trojans to 3D integration, but also from an international perspective that accounts for studies carried out across the globe. We have provided articles that should give our readers a highly interesting, yet widely informative, background on some of the most prevalent issues facing our global industry today. Indeed, our current market is filled with an ever-increasing need to go faster while maintaining fluid and efficient design; and this is a pursuit that must be highlighted on a cross-industry, global scope, if we are to fully take part in the increasing depth of international communication and collaboration. To start things off, we follow up from our last issue’s focus by providing an examination of Trojan threats due to design vulnerability with ‘‘Protection Against Hardware Trojan Attacks: Towards a Comprehensive Solution.’’ A reliance on third-party hardware IP is also highlighted as a cause for concern. A protection solution is proposed to combine predeployment design with postdeployment monitoringVa comprehensive method with high hopes for future defense. Our second entry, ‘‘Exploiting Multiple Mahalanobis Distance Metric to Screen Outliers From Analogue Product Manufacturing Test Responses,’’ provides an in-depth explanation from the University of Twente, The Netherlands, of two problemswith the Mahalanobis Distance classification method, before suggesting a new, more effective method of Multiple Mahalanobis. The conclusions are exemplified by the study of a real-world automobile product. A collaboration from New York University researchers is our third entry called ‘‘ExpeditedCompact Architecture for Average Scan Power Reduction,’’ and proposes an architectural solution to strengthen the reliability of chip under test. This selection poses to minimize scan power hot spots and high heat, while upholding design flow and delivering savings in test power. From here, we travel to researchers from the University of Ferhat Abbes in Algeria for our fourth entry, who present ‘‘An Optical BILBO for On-Line Testing of Embedded Systems,’’ an online optical testing approach to detect immediate faults in embedded systems without affecting normal operation. Using Built-In-Self-Test to combine duplication and comparison in real-time checking is examined, with the goal of stimulating further research on the benefits of optical testing. Our fifth entry, ‘‘Automatic Calibration of Streaming Applications for Software Mapping Exploration,’’ proposes a tool flow that can efficiently map streaming applications onto an MPSoC virtual platform,