Silicon verification

The global nature of supply chains presents an existential question for the trustworthiness of hardware: how do I know the chips in my device are genuine and pristine? Trusted domestic fabs only solve a facet of the problem: after a silicon wafer leaves the fab, it criss-crosses the globe multiple times as it is packaged, tested, and assembled into an end user product, presenting a huge attack surface for post-fab substitutions and alterations. The "Silicon Verification" project lays foundations for high resolution end-user, direct, and non-destructive optical inspection of chips. Our research aims to create a set of techniques for hardware packages that fill the analogous role of "digital signature verification" for software packages: a ubiquitous method to establish trust in a package, after it has been delivered to the user.