What's the News? AMD today announced AMD Versal tamper-resistant ("TR") devices, designed to protect security-critical information against sophisticated physical attacks while delivering the high-performance heterogeneous processing capabilities of AMD Versal AI Edge Series Gen 2. Versal TR devices are the industry's first adaptive SoC or FPGA-based devices providing built-in protection against physical attacks on the silicon backside. A sensor-based protection die is bonded to the main compute die using 3D active-on-active technology, shielding the entire backside of the device, protecting sensitive information, detecting physical attacks and preventing boot if the protection die is tampered with or removed. Combined with embedded CPUs, AI Engines and programmable logic, Versal TR devices help customers strengthen the protection of security-critical information without compromising system performance, size, weight, power or time to market.
Why It Matters? Protecting sensitive information from sophisticated physical attacks is a priority across markets and embedded applications. From data center networking and fintech applications to defense systems and critical industrial infrastructure, customers seeking higher levels of device security today typically build custom solutions in-house using mechanical enclosures, ASICs and other components, adding development cost, specialist resources, verification effort and re-spin risk. Versal TR devices integrate heterogeneous processing with enhanced security features including backside physical attack protection in a single device. This reduces the need for separate compute, security and enclosure-based protection components. This approach can save board area and simplify board design versus custom solutions while giving customers access to AMD tools, technical support and a broad partner ecosystem.