With the globalization of semiconductor production, untrusted entities involved in integrated circuit (IC) design and fabrication could use their access to intellectual property (IP) in order to copy IP or maliciously modify it. IC reverse engineering is the only foolproof way to assure IP owners that their design has not been copied or tampered with. Nevertheless, this cannot be achieved without overcoming numerous obstacles (noise, lack of information, etc) that limit successful outcomes of the reverse engineering process. Drs. Domenic Forte and Ronald Wilson are co-PIs on “SaTC: TTP: Medium: I-C-U: AI-Enabled Recovery and Assurance of Semiconductor IP from SEM Images” (PI Prof. Damon Woodard), a project sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) where artificial intelligence (AI) will be applied to automatically recover IC netlists from scanning electron microscope (SEM) images.

More information about the project can be found here and here.