ALPhANOV, the Optics and Lasers Technology Centre and eShard, an expert in the security of embedded devices, have combined their expertise since 2015 to offer international cybersecurity players cutting-edge tools for the analysis and evaluation of the security of microelectronic components.

From now on, a test laboratory will be set up jointly. Located in the ALPhANOV premises in Talence, France, it has all the latest generation laser and optical equipment as well as esDynamic, the scientific platform for security analyses of integrated circuits (IC). The objectives of this laboratory are multiple:

• To enable ALPhANOV and eShard customers and prospects to evaluate and test the latest generation of optical, laser equipment and associated software solutions.
• To enable eShard to propose studies to its customers for the security analysis of integrated circuits using ALPhANOV equipment.
• To enable ALPhANOV and eShard to carry out their joint R&D in order to keep proposing innovative solutions for the IC Security field.
• Carry out the joint "Laser Fault Injection" training courses run by the PYLA Training Centre.

The features available in this laboratory are numerous:

• S-LMS laser bench: Single Laser Microscope Station for single spot laser fault injection using the latest generation of laser sources.
• D-LMS laser bench: Double Laser Microscope Station allowing simultaneous injection of two independent and spatially dissociated laser sources.
• Q-LMS bench: Quadruple Laser Microscope Station allowing the injection of up to four independent laser sources.
• Photoemission - imaging for the analysis of the photonic emission of components.
• Photoemission - point detection part for the temporal analysis of photon emissions from components.
• Fault injection in the picosecond domain using the LFI Pico source for high frequency circuit analysis.
• Non-linear fault injection for improved spatial resolution using a two-photon femtosecond source.
• Thermal stimulation by laser at 1424 nm for side-channel analysis of memory states by local heating of transistors.

All the equipment in the application laboratory is operated by eShard's scientific platform: esDynamic. This tool allows driving the hardware instruments efficiently thanks to its Notebooks, widgets and the accessibility of the Python programming language. But above all, esDynamic allows managing all the characterization of integrated circuits thanks to its analysis tools. Among other things, it allows the mapping of the component's zones of interest, the analysis, the exploitation and the synthesis of the results.