DRESDEN, GERMANY – Fraunhofer IPMS began a research project in March to establish a platform for trusted electronic devices in Germany.

Velektronik is the central project of the funding guideline for Trusted Electronics of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The aim is to create secure value chains as an interface between research and industry.

Over the next three years, project partners from the Fraunhofer Society and the Leibniz Association, who together form the Research Fab Factory Microelectronics Germany, will work with edacentrum on solution concepts for trusted electronics encompassing all areas of electronics development and production.

 “Technological sovereignty means that, against the backdrop of a highly internationalized value chain, we retain sovereignty over the specific properties of the electronic components in our products,” said Johann Heyszl, head of the Hardware Security department at Fraunhofer AISEC and technical director of the research project. “This sustainably secures the innovation and competitiveness of German companies, especially small and medium-sized businesses.”

Electronics are considered trusted when they meet all expectations in terms of functionality and at the same time do not leave backdoors or vulnerabilities open to attackers or manipulation. The platform that will be developed as part of the research project will start here and consider the entire value chain to provide concrete concepts for trusted electronics. To this end, the partners will focus on creating a technological overview, contributing to the necessary standardization and building the network of research and industry, as well as the ultimate know-how.

Within the project, Fraunhofer IPMS is working on the trusted production of electronic components, so-called split manufacturing. This is the approach of having a chip processed and assembled by different foundries. For example, the assembly of the CMOS backplane can be separated from MEMS production. It is important to protect the IP of the individual components, to maintain interfaces and functionalities, and yet provide security features in hardware and software.

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