Microelectronics

We Deliver Compact Mission Specific Solutions with a Large Impact

Draper has played a pivotal role in crafting some of the nation's earliest microelectronics, including equipment for NASA's Apollo guidance system and strategic missiles. With this heritage, Draper continues to drive innovation by designing and manufacturing state-of-the-art, mission-specific microelectronics for hostile environments. Whether it is radiation hardening, security, cyber-resiliency, or supply-chain hardening, Draper’s expertise across the entire microelectronics lifecycle ensures that mission-critical processing capabilities meet the demand.  Our skilled team has successfully integrated electronic systems with diverse functionalities, condensing them into compact, singular microelectronic packages tailored to execute mission needs.  Understanding that unique missions require the ability to rapidly create solutions for a high mix manufacturing environment, Draper is focused on onshore advanced packaging enabling heterogeneous integration.  We are committed to strengthening the domestic microelectronic industrial base enabling trusted solutions for microelectronics fabrication, packaging, and production ensuring USG access to critical components.

Solutions

In environments where size, weight, and power constraints need to be met with high performance, mission specific processing, the need for application specific integrated circuit (ASICs) is integral to assuring mission success.  Draper develops, designs, and verifies analog, digital, and mixed-signal ASICs across all services of the U.S. government including, radiation-hardened electronic, bioelectronic, and radio frequency electronic application areas. We have decades of experience fabricating ASICs across a wide range of process node technologies including those from Intel, Global Foundries, Honeywell, and others. Access and experience with multiple foundry process design kits (PDK) and the most advanced ASIC development tools, set our ASIC team apart in the industry.  Draper has a created tried and true model for efficient ASIC development.

Miniaturization and customization of microelectronics are enabled by advanced packaging techniques. Our team is a pioneer in the development of Three-Dimensional Heterogeneous Integration (3DHI). The use of 3DHI enables the functionality of diverse electronics to integrate into single and downscaled microelectronic packages. This technique not only allows for horizontal interconnection but also vertical stacking, significantly increasing the functionality and density enclosed in a single microelectronics package with the increasing need for specialized microelectronics, 3DHI can leverage the burgeoning chiplet ecosystem, commercial die, and existing legacy components to bring together the elements needed to meet the system’s functionality. Draper has been designing these complex components for over a decade and has dedicated onshore production facilities needed to securely manufacture these solutions. 3DHI presents unprecedented customizable microelectronics options to meet mission needs.

Strategic systems require survivability in the harshest radiation environments. Our decades of support to this mission area created a unique expertise to ensure mission success. Radiation-Hardened (Rad-Hard) Design is a highly specialized field with limited availability of the required skill set. Draper develops radiation-aware architectures. The system and component development are executed in tandem, with radiation mitigations implemented at all levels of integration; From the individual transistors up through the system conop.

Cyber Solutions

Draper's Inherently Secure Processor (ISP) combines a suite of software tools and hardware extensions to protect processors from software vulnerabilities. ISP hardware monitors all executed instructions executed on a machine, maintains software-defined metadata – such as data origins and permissible memory references – and blocks violations of security policies. These customizable policies can address a wide range of exploit types and are adaptable to specific application domains and emerging threats. The hardware ensures policy reinforcement keeps pace with software, preventing subversion by malicious software, while the software allows for high policy customization. 

Additional Information

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Our team has developed Binary Piranha, a cutting-edge tool that transforms the cybersecurity analysis landscape by automating tasks and eliminating the need for manual analysis and tool development. Binary Piranha simplifies the cybersecurity analysis workflow, facilitating scalable deployment while maintaining ease of use for end-users and developers. It overcomes the brittleness of open-source solutions by providing a robust framework leveraging advanced techniques for effective utilization and deployment.

The Hardware Assisted Defense System (HADES) revolutionizes governmental defensive capabilities by analyzing advanced malware. HADES excels in understanding binary operations within a processor environment without leaving detectable traces. It captures and emulates diverse operations, enabling meticulous tracking of user-mode processes and kernel-mode drivers during execution.

Fuzzing is an automated software testing technology used to detect software flaws that may leave programs vulnerable to cyber exploitation. We released the Vader Modular Fuzzer (VMF), an open-source fuzzing architecture designed to streamline module development and integration. VMF facilitates the rapid evolution of fuzzing technologies to meet critical U.S. government requirements. 

VMF is available to the public on GitHub, along with a companion repository for early research concepts. Additionally, the VMF government version is available in a separate repository. For questions about VMF email: vmf@draper.com.

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