A Quick Look into Chip Design at BI
Microchips are the core of digital technologies. They control countless applications in communication, medicine, transportation, industry, and our everyday lives. To ensure that such systems operate safely and reliably, chips must be absolutely trustworthy.
At the Barkhausen Institut (BI), researchers therefore develop digital chips that allow new security concepts to be tested.
Every new chip must meet a variety of requirements. To achieve this, researchers combine different functional units, each responsible for specific specialized tasks.
These units are arranged on the chip much like buildings in an urban planning layout – with precisely designed routes and connections.
To ensure security and trustworthiness, the individual functional units are isolated from one another. Only the units needed for a specific task are allowed to communicate with each other.
In what is known as the tape-out, the final chip design is handed over to a specialized company, where it is prepared for manufacturing. The chip is then fabricated using cutting-edge technology in a semiconductor foundry before it returns to BI.
There, it undergoes extensive testing. The results flow directly into planning the next chip generation.