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Platform project "Velektronik" aims to establish a one stop shop for solutions in the field of trustworthy electronics.

Welcome to the homepage of research project HEP

The project VE-HEP will show the feasibility of using open-source tools in a wide range of the digital chip design value chain. This includes the use of an open-source processor design, the use of open-source design tools e.g. for the synthesis or the "place and route", as well as the development of public available automatic implementation schemes to harden the chip design against hardware attacks. The use case to implement all these ambitious goals is the design and fabrication of an open-source hardware security module (HSM) that will be integrated into an automotive application. To improve the quality and trustworthiness of such a critical module, verification schemes for the different design steps will be developed, extended, and integrated into the design flow.

From our press release of April 2021:

Secure and sovereign: Open-source processor designs boosted by new HEP project delivering free verification tools

Security chips are essential for many providers of electronic devices, from small personal devices to automobiles. They perform cryptographic operations and are intended to prevent manipulations, malfunctions or accidents. These chips should be open, flexibly adaptable and, as far as possible, mathematically proven to be secure. For global value chains with numerous actors, the supply of such cost-efficient components represents a great challenge. Open source processors offer a versatile alternative, as long as their security can be guaranteed via circuit design tools (EDA - Electronic Design Automation). A joint research project is working on this, dubbed “Hardening the value chain through open source, trustworthy EDA tools and processors (HEP)”, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of the “Trustworthy Electronics” initiative. [more]