Security and Vulnerability Implications of 3D ICs

Physical limit of transistor miniaturization has driven chip design into the third dimension. 3D integration technology emerges as a viable option to improve chip performance and increase device density in a direction orthogonal to costly device scaling. As 3D integration is becoming a promising technology for next-generation chip design, recent years have seen a huge proliferation of research literature exploiting it from a security perspective. This paper presents a survey on the current state of 3D integration technology from a security perspective and summarizes its security opportunities and challenges. We report current research work on 3D integration based security in three major applications: supply chain attack prevention, side-channel attack mitigation, and trustworthy computing system design. The security advantages and opportunities of 3D integration in these security applications are highlighted. Besides, the paper discusses new vulnerabilities risen by 3D integration that require researchers’ attention. Based on the survey result, we summarize the distinct characteristics of 3D ICs and investigate their impacts on security-aware 3D IC designs.