A Zero-overhead Flow for Security Closure

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Eslami, Mohammad, Johara, Ashira, Park, Kyungbin, Pagliarini, Samuel
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866911409966678016
author Eslami, Mohammad
Johara, Ashira
Park, Kyungbin
Pagliarini, Samuel
author_facet Eslami, Mohammad
Johara, Ashira
Park, Kyungbin
Pagliarini, Samuel
contents In the traditional Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) design flow, the concept of timing closure implies to reach convergence during physical synthesis such that, under a given area and power budget, the design works at the targeted frequency. However, security has been largely neglected when evaluating the Quality of Results (QoR) from physical synthesis. In general, commercial place & route tools do not understand security goals. In this work, we propose a modified ASIC design flow that is security-aware and, differently from prior research, does not degrade QoR for the sake of security improvement. Therefore, we propose a first-of-its-kind zero-overhead flow for security closure. Our flow is concerned with two distinct threat models: (i) insertion of Hardware Trojans (HTs) and (ii) physical probing/fault injection. Importantly, the flow is entirely executed within a commercial place & route engine and is scalable. In several metrics, our security-aware flow achieves the best-known results for the ISPD`22 set of benchmark circuits while incurring negligible design overheads due to security-related strategies. Finally, we open source the entire methodology (as a set of scripts) and also share the protected circuits (as design databases) for the benefit of the hardware security community.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_17385
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Zero-overhead Flow for Security Closure
Eslami, Mohammad
Johara, Ashira
Park, Kyungbin
Pagliarini, Samuel
Cryptography and Security
In the traditional Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) design flow, the concept of timing closure implies to reach convergence during physical synthesis such that, under a given area and power budget, the design works at the targeted frequency. However, security has been largely neglected when evaluating the Quality of Results (QoR) from physical synthesis. In general, commercial place & route tools do not understand security goals. In this work, we propose a modified ASIC design flow that is security-aware and, differently from prior research, does not degrade QoR for the sake of security improvement. Therefore, we propose a first-of-its-kind zero-overhead flow for security closure. Our flow is concerned with two distinct threat models: (i) insertion of Hardware Trojans (HTs) and (ii) physical probing/fault injection. Importantly, the flow is entirely executed within a commercial place & route engine and is scalable. In several metrics, our security-aware flow achieves the best-known results for the ISPD`22 set of benchmark circuits while incurring negligible design overheads due to security-related strategies. Finally, we open source the entire methodology (as a set of scripts) and also share the protected circuits (as design databases) for the benefit of the hardware security community.
title A Zero-overhead Flow for Security Closure
topic Cryptography and Security
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.17385