opoSoM: A Modular Measurement Platform for Dynamic Power Consumption of SoCs

Software can have a significant impact on the electrical characteristics of the executing integrated circuit. The analysis of minor current consumption changes in a System-on-Chip reveals details about the executed instructions or the hardware’s internal logic, potentially exposing sensible information. Despite careful design, glitches pose a further challenge that needs to be handled at hardware and software level. This paper introduces the concept of the open-source, modular opoSoM measurement platform that captures the dynamic power characteristics of System-on-Chips featuring external and on-chip measurement techniques. Due to the configurable measurement range and synchronous sampling at up to 250 MS/s, the platform provides valuable measurement data for investigating countermeasures against side-channel attacks and optimizing hardware and software towards lower dynamic power consumption.