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| Photo Courtesy of DARPA |
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are seeking proposals to develop a small (100 micron x 100 micron) component or dielet, that will authenticate the origin of electronic components and give 100% assurance against counterfeits.
Over the past two years alone, over one million suspect counterfeit parts have been associated with known compromises of the defense supply chain. With both expensive and inexpensive electronic parts being targeted, counterfeit as well as suspect parts, present a critical risk to the Department of Defense (DoD), where a malfunction of a single part could lead to system failures that put lives and missions at risk.
The DARPA program, named Supply Chain Hardware Integrity for Electronics Defense (SHEILD), seeks to develop a component or dielet which will contain a full encryption engine, sensors to detect tampering and will readily affix to today's electronic components such as microchips.
The successful development of SHIELD technology will provide 100% assurance against common threats such as; recycled components that are sold as new, unlicensed overproduction, test rejects and sub standard components sold as high-quality, parts falsely marked, clones and copies and components that are repackaged for unauthorised applications.
“SHIELD demands a tool that costs less than a penny per unit, yet makes counterfeiting too expensive and technically difficult to do,” said Kerry Bernstein, DARPA program manager. “The dielet will be designed to be robust in operation, yet fragile in the face of tampering. What SHIELD is seeking is a very advanced piece of hardware that will offer an on-demand authentication method never before available to the supply chain.”
The dielet will be inserted into the electronic component's package by the manufacturer, or affixed to existing trusted components, without any impact on its design or reliability. There will be no electrical connection between the two. Authenticity testing could then be done anywhere with a handheld probe, or an automated one for larger volumes. Probes will need to be close to the dielet for scanning. After a scan, an inexpensive appliance (perhaps a smartphone) uploads a serial number to a central, industry-owned server. The sever then sends an unencrypted challenge to the dielet, which sends back an encrypted answer and data from passive sensors - like light exposure - that could indicate tampering.
DARPA will be hosting a Proposers' Day Workshop in support of the SHIELD program, which will be held on 14th March 2014. For more information and to read the article in full, please visit the DARPA website.
Visit the Atlantis Electronics website to view our Counterfeit Policy.
Applied DNA Sciences and LMI have agreed to join their efforts and expertise to help protect national security and commercial supply chains from counterfeit electronic parts.
This joining of forces seeks to educate the public and private sectors on the increasing risk posed by counterfeits and to encourage development of preventive measures.
Applied DNA Sciences is a security technology firm based in New York. They provide authentication solutions that help to protect against theft, counterfeiting, fraud and diversion. Read about their SigNature® DNA anti-counterfeiting authentication solution in our recent blog post.
LMI is a private, not-for-profit, leading consultancy who are committed to helping government leaders and managers reach decisions that make a difference.
"Supply chains critical for commerce and security are under attack. In the electronics arena, remarking, cloning, and manufacture from salvaged die are creating increasingly sophisticated counterfeits.” said Joe Doyle, senior consultant for LMI. “A cutting edge technology company in this space working with a leading supply chain consultancy is just the sort of collaboration that can make a difference,” Doyle added.
To read the press release in full, please visit the Applied DNA Sciences website, or to read Atlantis Electronics counterfeit policy, please visit our website.
The Semiconductor Industry Association
(SIA) have reported that worldwide semiconductor sales reached an
industry annual record in 2013, totalling $305.6 billion. This is an
increase of 4.8% from 2012's total of $291.6 billion.
December
2013 alone reached $26.6 billion, marking the strongest December on
record. Also, Q4 2013 global sales reached $79.9, a 7.7% increase from
the $74.2 billion reached in Q4 2012.
“The global semiconductor
industry exceeded $300 billion in sales for the first time ever in 2013,
spurred by consistent, steady growth across nearly all regions and
product categories,” said Brian Toohey, president and CEO, SIA. “The
industry finished the year on a strong note with its best December on
record, indicating that recent momentum is likely to carry over into
2014.”
Strong demand was seen in several product segments in
2013, with Logic being the largest semiconductor category by sales,
reaching $85.9 billion in 2013, a 5.2% increase from 2012. Memory at
$67.0 billion and MOS Micro-ICs at $58.7 billion, were also up in the
top 3 in terms of revenue sales. Memory was the fastest growing segment
with an increase of 17.6% in 2013, with DRAM performing particularly
well, increasing by 33.3% year-over-year. While NAND flash also
experienced a strong growth of 8.1%.
Other well performing
product segments include; optoelectronic products which reached $27.6
billion in sales with a 5.3% annual increase, and Analog which reached
$40.1 billion in sales with a 2.1% annual increase.
To read the article in full, please visit the SIA website.
Thank you for your continued support throughout the year. We wish you well over the holiday season and New Year celebrations.We will be closed for the holiday season from 4:30pm (EST) Friday 20th December 2013, reopening in the New Year at 08:30am (EST) on Thursday 2nd January 2014. We will be ready and waiting to receive all your inquires and annual scheduling and please let us know if you have any excess stock, we wish you a busy and prosperous New Year. Once again have a wonderful holiday season.
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| Photo Courtesy of DARPA |
Microelectronics experts at Honeywell Aerospace are helping U.S. military researchers to develop electronic systems and other electronic components which are capable of decomposing in a controlled and triggerable manner.
Scientists at the U.S. Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), awarded a $2.5 million contract to the Honeywell Aerospace Microelectronics & Precision Sensors segment for the Vanishing Programmable Resources (VAPR) program. The goal of the contract is to develop electronic components that will physically decompose on command to prevent unauthorised use.
DARPA officials say that short-life electronics may enable revolutionary new military and medical capabilities. They state it is nearly impossible to track and recover every electronic device from the battlefield. With these new capabilities, once the device is triggered to dissolve it becomes useless, meaning the risk of environmental effects, counterfeiting and potential enemy use will be eradicated. Also, devices that resorb into the body may aid in continuous health monitoring and treatment. The devices are intended to perform similar to commercial-off-the-shelf electronics, but with an ability to last only as long as they are needed. The trigger could be real-time via a signal or as a result of environmental conditions, such as temperature. To find out more about the VAPR program, please visit the DARPA website.
In a recent article in the CIE magazine, Adam Fletcher, chairman of Afdec and ECSN, talks about how the opinion on investing in inventory needs to be rethought as it's not the liability it once was.
It's a well known fact that excess inventory is a financial drain on any business. What's not as well known is that moving inventory (turning stock or consumed materials), is a real business asset for the electronic component supply network industries.
Commonly, manufacturers' inventory is measured as being below, on, above or grossly above target levels based on forecasting, results which purchasing departments then need to answer for. The disaster scenario is a 'stock-out' (no inventory) situation, generally caused by unforeseeable technical or supply problems or an unusual increase in demand. 'stock-out' situations have a knock on effect on sales targets and leaves managers wanting to know what went wrong and how quickly it will be removed.
Just-in-time, lean manufacturing is used in an effort to hold inventory in the range between 'below' and 'on' target levels. This approach works best when forecasting is accurate and stable and component lead times are low to stable.
For the last decade lead times for a wide range of electronic components have been low, typically under two weeks, but this has not always been the case. In 2011, when a natural disaster occurred, lead times rapidly increased from 6, to 12 and then to 16 weeks and remained at that level for several months.
During this time, companies reliant on lean manufacturing had to reduce their output in line with availability and faced a huge loss in revenue. Some even had to temporarily close down plants altogether.
Fletcher goes on to explain that authorized distributors support over 95% of electronic component requirements. One of the important but little recognized roles of a distributor is to aggregate multiple customer demand and put the necessary inventory in place to effectively buffer the customer from lead time fluctuations.
Atlantis Electronics, an independent stocking distributor also offers a free Scheduling Service which gives you complete piece of mind, improved productivity and cost savings.
To read about all the benefits of our Scheduling Service, please visit our website.
Or alternatively, give us a call on +1 905 290 1563 to talk through the options we offer.
In a recent article, SGS report that we are on the 'tip of an environmental iceberg' when it comes to implementing processes to effectively manage the collection, risk assessment, and quality assessment of material data across the supply chain.
Electrical and electronics manufacturers around the world are facing an ever increasing demand to be held accountable for every molecule of material contained in their products which may impact the health of the environment, consumers and individuals responsible for manufacturing, recovery, recycling and disposal of end of life products.
The Challenges faced by electrical and electronics suppliers and product manufacturers today include:
- An ever increasing growth of global regulations: Back in 2002, there were about 25 regulations for substance restrictions globally, compared to around 200 presently in 2013. The products in scope of the regulations have also grown due to the impact of legislation such as RoHS and REACH.
- The complexity and volume of material identification and reporting: Materials and substances need to be identified and the data stored and be accessible to the company as well as consumers.
Steps To Help Overcome These Challenges
If you are a supplier of materials, you will need to identify and report the chemical composition of your supplied materials to the capacitor manufacturer.
If you are the manufacturer you must obtain material composition disclosure information from your suppliers to pass on to your customers. If your material supplier cannot or will not provide the information you will need to take further actions such as removing the supplier from your Approved Manufacturers List (AML) or if that is not possible, having the material analyzed by an accredited materials testing laboratory.
If you are an original equipment manufacturer you will need to have a system in place to store, manage and make available, the data you received from your suppliers, and linked to your product bill of material. These data records, in the case of RoHS II would become part of your Technical Documentation File for your product and must be kept on file for ten years and made available to an EU member state enforcement officer when requested.
To read this article in full, please visit the SGS website.
