New project will improve chip performance
Published March 23, 2022
Power Systems Design reported that UB has been chosen by the Department of Defense (DoD) to lead a $7.5 million project that will develop new concepts to perform precision testing of the important qualities of semiconductor chips.
The goals of the research are to increase our fundamental understanding of physical processes that could be used to evaluate chip performance and security, and creating new, ultra-sensitive testing strategies that build on this knowledge. The research will be funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research through the DoD’s Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI).
“We will develop new and dramatically improved ways to ensure that computer chips are authentic and will work as expected,” said Paras Prasad, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physics, and the project’s principal investigator. “This helps to avoid potentially devastating consequences of either intentional or unintentional malfunction of everything from smartphones to fighter jets.”
“Our project is about is establishing new techniques for probing or monitoring chips so that you can enhance their performance even further,” says Jonathan Bird, professor and chair of electrical engineering at UB and a co-principal investigator on the grant.
