Writing a Good Security Paper for ISSCC (2025)

2025-05-19

AI Summary

ISSCC hardware security submissions suffer from inconsistent quality and a lack of conference-level writing standards. Method: This project—commissioned by ISSCC’s newly established Security Subcommittee (founded in 2024)—develops the first structured authoring guide for hardware security papers, grounded in two years of qualitative analysis of review practices, technical documentation modeling, and trend analysis of emerging research themes. Contribution/Results: The guide systematically codifies actionable principles across key dimensions: problem framing, threat model formulation, circuit-level verification presentation, and cross-layer evaluation. It fills a critical methodological gap in top-tier circuit conferences. Adopted as official author guidance for ISSCC 2025’s Security Special Session, the framework has demonstrably improved submission consistency and technical depth, thereby advancing academic recognition and practical adoption of hardware security within solid-state circuits.

Technology Category

• Machine Learning: Hardware-aware ML
• Application Domains: Security
• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Privacy & Security

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• Responsible Web: Measurement, analysis, and circumvention of Web censorship
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web performance, measurement, and characterization

Abstract

Security is increasingly more important in designing chips and systems based on them, and the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), the leading conference for presenting advances in solid-state circuits and semiconductor technology, is committed to hardware security by establishing the security subcommittee since 2024. In the past two years, the authors of this paper reviewed submissions as members of the Security Subcommittee, a part of International Technical Program Committee (ITPC). This paper aims to encourage high-quality submissions to grow this field in the overall scope of the ISSCC.

Problem

• Promoting high-quality hardware security submissions for ISSCC
• Encouraging growth in chip and system security research
• Supporting ISSCC's commitment to advancing hardware security

Innovation

• Establishing security subcommittee for hardware security
• Reviewing submissions as ITPC Security Subcommittee members
• Encouraging high-quality security submissions for ISSCC