The Fight against Theft, Cloning and Counterfeiting of Integrated Circuits

International audienceFabless semiconductor industry is facing the rise of design costs of integrated circuits. This rise is linked to the process technology changes and the complexity increase. Consequently, integrated circuits have become targets of counterfeiting and theft. This talk presents a state of the art of solutions to fight against theft, illegal cloning and counterfeiting of integrated circuits and intellectual properties. It will mainly highlight the salutary hardware which means embedded hardware systems, hardly detectable / difficult to circumvent, inserted in an integrated circuit or a virtual component (Intellectual Property), used to provide intellectual property information (e.g. watermarking or hardware licensing) and / or to remotely activate the circuit or IP after being manufactured and during its use