Many Intel PRC customers worked on low-cost solutions in server platforms. This paper introduced a method to investigate dual strip line performance on high-speed interfaces like DDR and PCIe. Through a practical design on an Intel Haswell-EP server platform in Huawei, we achieved 4-PCB-layer reduction compared to the original board, saving system bill-of-material cost effectively. Pre- and post-layout simulations were performed to evaluate design risks on signal integrity and power integrity. The electrical validations on board proved the comparable system performance of the low-cost design with the original board and Intel customer reference board, correlating to simulation results as well.

Various hardware attacks have recently emerged to fail chips in critical civil and military infrastructures. However, most of them jeopardize the circuit functionality through additional hardware, where several countermeasures have been developed. In this paper, we present a very interesting yet powerful virus that can cause chip failure. Instead of directly injecting hardware sub-circuits that require layout modification or split manufacturing, we use resonant noise in power delivery system as the weapon. We show that, with simple but particular manipulations at software layer, repetitive excitations can be created. As the period gets closer to the resonance of the power delivery system, caused by on-chip capacitance and package inductance, significant voltage overshoot and undershoot can occur, preventing the regular operations of phase-locked-loops and other sensitive components. In short, the virus can hide deep within the software programs, but is easy to activate and impose severe impacts. Experimental results show that the proposed resonant virus may result in noise up to 33-53% of the nominal supply level, which doubles the noise generated by PARSEC3 workload. Moreover, the virus brings 8-19% more performance degradation than the regular workload.

PCB layer reduction to save system BOM cost in an Intel Haswell-EP server platform

Citations

Power Delivery Resonant Virus: Concept and Applications

References

Design Optimization for Minimal Crosstalk in Differential Interconnect

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