Supporting IP strategy in the semiconductor industry

The breadth of reverse engi­neer­ing required to inno­vate, pro­tect and mon­e­tise intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty (IP) in the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try has explod­ed as the inter­net of things has rapid­ly expand­ed the chip mar­ket. There are an esti­mat­ed 50 bil­lion con­nect­ed devices glob­al­ly, accord­ing to Eric­s­son. Chips are no longer the pre­serve of mobile phones, but can also be found in cars, appli­ances, med­ical equip­ment and more. 

This has made it extreme­ly dif­fi­cult for semi­con­duc­tor and elec­tron­ics com­pa­nies to under­stand whether their IP is being used with­out their knowl­edge. Reverse engi­neer­ing, the prac­tice of decon­struct­ing a device to under­stand what it is doing and how it was built, has had to advance in line with mul­ti­ple use-cas­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly in areas such as advanced proces­sors, mem­o­ry, radio con­nec­tiv­i­ty, pow­er man­age­ment and image sen­sors. 

To under­stand IP with a chip, it can be reverse engi­neered in a num­ber of ways, for exam­ple start­ing with process or struc­tur­al analy­sis, which is becom­ing increas­ing­ly com­plex as man­u­fac­tur­ers seek to fit more func­tion­al­i­ty into small­er chips. The lat­est iPhone includes Apple’s most advanced chip yet, using 5 nanome­ter process tech­nol­o­gy. 

Next could be under­stand­ing the cir­cuit design, through exam­in­ing both the phys­i­cal, or schemat­ic, design as well as the actu­al func­tion­al­i­ty and per­for­mance of the chip inter­nals dur­ing oper­a­tion. Sys­tems reverse engi­neer­ing is anoth­er approach, show­ing how mul­ti­ple chips inter­act dur­ing oper­a­tion depend­ing on hard­ware, firmware and soft­ware.

“Semi­con­duc­tors are becom­ing ubiq­ui­tous,” says Gavin Carter, chief exec­u­tive of TechIn­sights, the lead­ing infor­ma­tion plat­form pro­vid­ing advanced tech­nol­o­gy analy­sis and IP ser­vices to the world’s largest tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies. “The speed of inno­va­tion isn’t slow­ing down and the com­plex­i­ty of reverse engi­neer­ing has to keep pace with that. It’s very dif­fi­cult to get a broad view of what’s going on in the indus­try and to mon­i­tor com­peti­tors that may or may not even be in the same appli­ca­tion space but use the same tech­nol­o­gy.

“In a fair mar­ket­place, semi­con­duc­tor intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty can be both cre­at­ed and mon­e­tised. The cre­ation part is the ongo­ing inno­va­tion of semi­con­duc­tors and mon­eti­sa­tion is then hav­ing the chip ulti­mate­ly appear in a prod­uct, the man­u­fac­tur­er dri­ving rev­enue direct­ly from that, or the own­er of the IP licens­ing its use in a chip. There is a lot of IP wrapped around the semi­con­duc­tor. Our plat­form pro­vides a cen­tral repos­i­to­ry of our analy­sis, images, schemat­ics and cost­ing data so it can be eas­i­ly lever­aged to pro­tect and mon­e­tise IP or for com­pet­i­tive intel­li­gence pur­pos­es.”

TechIn­sights has led reverse engi­neer­ing in the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try for more than 30 years, sup­port­ing a fair mar­ket­place where IP can be inno­vat­ed and mon­e­tised. By reveal­ing the inno­va­tion oth­ers can­not inside the broad­est range of advanced tech­nol­o­gy prod­ucts, the com­pa­ny enables busi­ness lead­ers to make the best tech­nol­o­gy invest­ment deci­sions and prove patent val­ue with fact-based infor­ma­tion.

With TechIn­sights’ broad but also deep look into how semi­con­duc­tors are built, organ­i­sa­tions can gain a cost-effec­tive view into whether or not their IP is being used in the mar­ket. When they find it is being used, they require doc­u­men­ta­tion that can sup­port straight­for­ward licens­ing nego­ti­a­tions all of the way up to lit­i­ga­tion. This is where the foren­sics come in and the sophis­ti­cat­ed ana­lyt­i­cal tech­niques used by TechIn­sights allow IP own­ers to doc­u­ment exact­ly what they need, whether it’s the man­u­fac­tur­ing process, the func­tion­al­i­ty in a chip or the cir­cuit design.

With more than 200 engi­neers high­ly skilled specif­i­cal­ly in reverse engi­neer­ing, TechIn­sights is able to analyse and reveal inno­va­tion in prod­ucts in ways oth­er com­pa­nies sim­ply can’t match. The company’s embed­ded knowl­edge is bol­stered by its learn­ings from patent­ing some of its own tech­nol­o­gy, includ­ing its delay­er­ing process when reverse engi­neer­ing a chip. This exper­tise is sup­port­ed by sig­nif­i­cant cap­i­tal equip­ment includ­ing mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar equip­ment that is nor­mal­ly used in man­u­fac­tur­ing semi­con­duc­tors, but has been recon­fig­ured to sup­port reverse engi­neer­ing. 

“Those three ele­ments com­bined, along with our incred­i­ble pas­sion to reverse engi­neer the lat­est inno­va­tion, clear­ly dif­fer­en­ti­ate our ser­vices,” says Carter. “The top ten semi­con­duc­tor com­pa­nies glob­al­ly all lever­age the TechIn­sights plat­form. They’ve engi­neered a chip, they may also have some of the capa­bil­i­ties required to reverse engi­neer it, how­ev­er they work with us because of our broad cov­er­age across a wide range of devices, speed and depth of analy­sis, and the neu­tral­i­ty we bring. That third-par­ty neu­tral­i­ty is incred­i­bly valu­able in a licens­ing nego­ti­a­tion or a dis­pute. Ulti­mate­ly, we doc­u­ment facts and that’s very well respect­ed in the indus­try.”

TechIn­sights has evolved its strat­e­gy to cre­ate even more val­ue for IP own­ers by build­ing a broad­er con­tent plat­form for the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try. This includes increas­ing the use of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and machine-learn­ing for a range of appli­ca­tions, from short­en­ing the time tak­en to analyse cir­cuits, to the cur­rent short-term goal of bring­ing in rel­e­vant third-par­ty con­tent. 

Through the plat­form, TechIn­sights gives com­pa­nies a com­plete view of the IP land­scape and allows them to bench­mark prod­ucts against com­peti­tors. Mean­while, with Moore’s law, the dou­bling of com­plex­i­ty on a com­put­er chip every two years, the need for sophis­ti­cat­ed reverse engi­neer­ing is only going to increase even fur­ther in the future. 

“It might not be as lin­ear as we’ve seen over the last 50 years, but the com­plex­i­ty will con­tin­ue to get more chal­leng­ing to reverse engi­neer,” says Jason Abt, chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer at TechIn­sights. “We’re going to see few­er organ­i­sa­tions able to do that reverse engi­neer­ing on their own, even a small part of it, and rely­ing more heav­i­ly on TechIn­sights to pro­vide it. 

“It’s also going to be more dif­fi­cult to mon­i­tor what’s going on in the indus­try. It’s not at all unusu­al to see an inven­tive con­cept orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed for, say, a mobile phone sud­den­ly appear­ing in a tyre pres­sure mon­i­tor in a car. 

“That cross-pol­li­na­tion of tech­nol­o­gy against dif­fer­ent appli­ca­tions is going to con­tin­ue to grow, mak­ing it even hard­er for indi­vid­ual organ­i­sa­tions to mon­i­tor exact­ly what’s going on in the indus­try and the poten­tial use of their intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty. The use of the kind of con­tent that TechIn­sights brings to bear will become increas­ing­ly impor­tant to not only main­tain a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage but to pro­tect their IP.”

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it techinsights.com

Pro­mot­ed by TechIn­sights