A Non-destructive Analysis Method for Integrated Circuit-Based Finite State Machines

Abstract

The world is becoming increasingly computerized; much of this computing hardware is put into silicon overseas, increasing the number of unknown or untrusted sourced ICs in critical systems. Current methods of determining the correctness of an IC are either destructive or non-specific, and usually focus on the physical structure of the IC. This work describes a solution which performs a logical, black-box analysis of the state machines upon which ICs are built. This solution was implemented on both a regular CPU and a GPU, to explore parallelization possibilities for speed benefits. These implementations were able to accurately discover the structure of the original state machines in all cases. Simulated state machines with twenty or fewer states were discoverable within one minute.