UMass Amherst Engineer Daniel E. Holcomb Gets NSF CAREER Grant to Study Supply Chain Security for Integrated Circuits

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Daniel Holcomb
Daniel Holcomb

AMHERST, Mass. – Daniel E. Holcomb, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has received a five-year, $596,160 National Science Foundation Early Career Development (CAREER) grant to study supply chain security for integrated circuits.

Holcomb says integrated circuits, sometimes called computer chips or microchips, are key components of critical systems that underpin modern societies. They are produced by a global supply chain, a network of designers, producers, suppliers and shippers that make the chips and then distribute the finished products to customers.

These networks are made up of a variety of actors in many countries around the world some of whom are trusted while other aren’t. Untrusted actors pose threats to supply chains such as providing counterfeit chips or possibly making malicious changes to the chips that change or corrupt their primary functions, Holcomb says. These issues affect the security of electronic systems used in the defense and healthcare industries as well as the operation of key parts of the infrastructure such as power grids.

Semiconductor industry sales in 2016 reached $339 billion worldwide, with $164 billion in sales going to U.S. companies alone. Holcomb says there is a burgeoning danger in how companies currently manage their semiconductor supply chains. “Supply-chain threats such as counterfeits and hardware Trojans can compromise reliability of integrated circuits and lead to unexpected or malicious functionalities embedded within them,” says Holcomb.

Holcomb proposes a new framework for supply-chain security organized around three main thrusts that deal with both the production and distribution aspects of the process. The first is a new design style for digital chips that uses programmable logic to prevent malicious actors in the supply chain from understanding a design well enough to manipulate it in a targeted manner.

The second addresses the design side of the supply chain and seeks new formal abstractions for understanding hardware Trojans that could be inserted by a malicious actor in a foundry.

The third addresses the distribution side of the supply chain and proposes a low-cost authentication framework that aims to keep counterfeit integrated circuits out of products and systems.

Economic trends in the semiconductor industry have created an environment of outsourced production and distribution that makes supply-chain security a top priority. “If we are going to entrust so many critical functions to electronic systems,” Holcomb says, “we must have a supply-chain framework in place for trusting the chips.”

He says proposed changes in supply chain security can have significant positive effects during the next five to ten years.

The new supply chain security project supports the broader research goal of Holcomb's research group to secure the hardware of critically important embedded systems. Other ongoing research projects in his laboratory design cryptographic circuits for low power chips, and chips that can resist attacks by particularly well-equipped adversaries.