The National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) June 30 framework for analyzing collusion threats in the semiconductor supply chain provides a way to compare threats involving adversaries at different stages of the chain and to reason about security-cost tradeoffs.
Its deeper value is a reminder that supply-chain assurance cannot be reduced to evaluating one supplier at a time.
International Business Machines (IBM) and ASM Pacific Technology (ASMPT) have announced progress in hybrid bonding, a packaging technique that can connect smaller chip components with far denser interconnections. The development is part of a broader move toward chiplets: modular components that can be combined into a larger system rather than fabricating every function on one monolithic chip.
The architectural promise is flexibility. The management challenge is that more of the system's performance and trust now lives at the interfaces among components and organizations.