The case of using CMOS FD-SOI rather than CMOS bulk to harden ICs against laser attacks

Abstract : At first used to emulate the effects of radioactive ionizing particules passing through integrated circuits (ICs), laser illumination is also used to inject faults into the computations of secure ICs for the purpose of retrieving secret data. The CMOS FD-SOI technology is expected to be less sensitive to laser faults injection than the more usual CMOS bulk technology. We report in this work an experimental assessment of the interest of using FD-SOI rather than CMOS bulk to decrease laser sensitivity. Our experiments were conducted on test chips at the 28 nm node for both technologies with laser pulse durations in the picosecond and nanosecond ranges.