Battelle Introduces Breakthrough Anti-Counterfeiting Detection for Integrated Circuits

COLUMBUS, OH--(Marketwired - March 17, 2015) - Battelle today announced Barricade™, a new technology that eliminates the risk of counterfeit integrated circuits in devices for aerospace and defense systems, critical infrastructure, medical devices and other essential systems. Barricade provides fast, non-destructive authentication of electronic components from both trusted and untrusted sources, enabling separation of cloned or counterfeit components from authentic ones at a dramatically lower cost than alternative methods.

Battelle will demonstrate the new technology to attendees of the 40th Annual GOMAC Tech Conference at booth 223 at the event, which takes place in St. Louis from March 23-26.

"As counterfeiting continues to be a growing issue for both suppliers and manufacturers, ensuring that all components are effectively and accurately verified for authenticity has become an increasingly time consuming and expensive task," said Larry J. House, Cyber Technical Director of Battelle. "Barricade represents a giant step forward from current approaches to chip authentication that will dramatically simplify the validation process. We look forward to helping move the industry towards a cost-effective, efficient and standardized process for chip authentication."

Barricade is comprised of electronic component signal acquisition hardware and software installed at customer sites. The simple validation process involves placing the IC into a chip socket in the Barricade hardware to receive confirmation of authenticity or detection of counterfeit or cloned components within seconds. Barricade is applicable to both analog and digital devices. It determines authenticity based on electrical signatures and a classification algorithm that generates identity signatures for each class of chips in a given class of authentic devices. Only a few authentic chips are necessary to enroll an entire class of chips into Barricade.

Unlike existing anti-counterfeiting technologies, which require tagging and tracking, or time-consuming and costly commercial testing, Barricade provides a simple and repeatable process that can be conducted at any point in the supply chain to eliminate the risk of counterfeit components and to help address emerging regulations for anti-counterfeiting.

In addition to detecting counterfeit integrated circuits, testing of Battelle Barricade in commercial environments has shown promise for its application in other critical areas, including detection of military grade or commercial grade components and cloned components.

About Battelle
Every day, the people of Battelle apply science and technology to solving what matters most. At major technology centers and national laboratories around the world, Battelle conducts research and development, designs and manufactures products, and delivers critical services for government and commercial customers. Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio since its founding in 1929, Battelle serves the national security, health and life sciences, and energy and environmental industries. For more information, visit www.battelle.org.