Zilog, Inc.

Maxim Integrated Products, Inc.

William James Tiffany

Randal Quincy Thornley

Gyle Dee Yearsley

David Alan Roberts

Joshua J Nekl

Lloyd A Hasley

Dale Wilson

Tampering with an assembly that includes an integrated circuit is detected by measuring a change in at least one property of a conductive molding formed over at least a portion of the integrated circuit. For example, the conductive molding can be a mixture of resin with conductive powder and/or fibers. The molding can be formed as a continuous region or as strips of conductive material. Conductive contacts are positioned to provide and receive current through portions of the conductive material. For example, the property of the molding can be an impedance of a portion of the conductive molding. A significant change in the impedance measured through one or more conductive contacts indicates tampering with the assembly.

Intrusion detection using a conductive material

A clock multiplexer circuit uses a delay element to detect a transition-free period in a first signal present on a D-input lead of an output latch. The output latch is then controlled to latch the stable value of the first signal, and to hold the value of the first signal on an output lead of the clock multiplexer circuit. The clock multiplexer circuit then controls a multiplexer of the clock multiplexer circuit to couple a second signal onto the D-input lead of the output latch. The clock multiplexer circuit then enables the output latch synchronously with respect to the second signal such that the output latch is made transparent at a time when the second signal on the D-input of the output latch is stable and not transitioning. The result is glitch free clock switching from the first signal to the second signal.

Glitch free clock multiplexer that uses a delay element to detect a transition-free period in a clock signal

Fast electromagnetic transient (EFT) events of short duration are often not detected by power-on reset circuitry of an integrated circuit (IC). A fault detector circuit involves many fault detectors. The fault detectors are distributed across the IC and may be embodied in spare cells left in a standard cell IC. Each fault detector is initialized with a digital logic value. The fault detector circuit is then controlled such that the digital logic value stored should not change if the IC is operated under normal operating conditions. An EFT event that is undetected by the power-on reset circuit may, however, cause one of the digital logic values stored in one of the fault detectors to switch. If the digital logic value stored in any one of the fault detectors switches, then a fault signal is provided to the power-on reset circuit that in turn resets the IC.

Circuit for detection of hardware faults due to temporary power supply fluctuations

A single shared processing path is used as contexts are switched during processing. Each unique context is processed using a corresponding unique pipeline. If a pipeline that is executing under one context stalls, processing is switched in the shared processing path to another pipeline that is executing under second context. New pipelines are enabled for execution by borrowing a clock cycle from the currently executing pipeline. In some cases contexts are assigned various relative priority levels. In one case a context switching microprocessor is used in a communication engine portion of a system-on-a-chip communication system.

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Eagle, ID, United States of America

William James Tiffany