A Washington State University research team has uncovered significant and previously unknown vulnerabilities in high-performance computer chips that could lead to failures in modern electronics.

The researchers found they could damage the on-chip communications system and shorten the lifetime of the whole computer chip significantly by deliberately adding malicious workload.

Led by Partha Pande, assistant professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, they reported on the work during the recent 2018 IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Networks-on-Chip.