Self-Checking Chip Hunts Out its Own Defects, Signs of Sabotage


In a bid to mitigate risks from malicious circuitry, researchers have designed a chip solution which comprises an embedded moduel to verify calculations and an external module to validate initial proofs. 

Concerned with the opportunities for bad actors to manipulate circuitry along the chip supply chain, Siddharth Garg, an electrical engineering professor at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, has taken an approach known as 'verifiable computing' (VC) to help identify potential Trojans. 

While software bugs are relatively easy to spot and patch, hardware faults are undetectable and can act without being noticed. 

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