Autofocus (AF) is a widely investigated subject in the fields of natural scene images, industrial assembly and biologic microscopy. This paper proposes a new effective AF method for infrared (IR) microscopy in the context of the Integrated Circuit industry (IC). The proposed method operates in the wavelet domain using a custom orthogonal wavelet for the 2D Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). The quality criterion of our AF algorithm relies on the standard deviance of the DWT coefficients, computed per subband and per level. Tested on several optical magnifying lenses, our method is robust time-efficient, and usable on-the-fly in the IC location system.

Nowadays hi-tech secure products offer more services and more security. The corresponding market is now oriented towards more flexibility. As an answer we propose here a Multi-algorithm Cryptographic Co-processor called Celator. A main processor entrusts to the Celator the cryptographic tasks like encrypting or decrypting data blocks using secret key encryption algorithms such as Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) or Data Encryption Standard (DES). Moreover Celator allows hashing data using the Secure Hash Algorithms (SHA). These algorithms are frequently implemented in hi-tech secure products in software or in hardware mode. Celator corresponds to their flexible hardware implementation. Moreover an user can (under specific conditions) implement its own cryptographic algorithm in Celator.Celator can perform an AES encryption with a throughput of 47 Mbps, the DES encryption with a throughput of 26 Mbps, condense a 512 bit SHA message with a throughput of 36 Mbps. Finally we report performance comparisons among Celator, General Purpose Processors, and some dedicated and dynamically reconfigurable circuits.

This paper proposes an innovative autofocus method to ensure the image of an integrated circuit is correctly in focus under an infrared microscope. It discusses the difficulties inherent to the optical system and explores several inefficient methods used for natural scenes. It will also present a Focus Metric based on POlynomial Decomposition (FMPOD) adapted to our context. This approach relies on analyzing the projection of images on an orthonormal polynomial basis. Its robustness is tested using different magnifying lenses in addition to multiple distortions. In conclusion, we will demonstrate how this novel approach outperforms existing methods related to our work environment.

We present an IP-core called PHCA which stands for programmable hardware cellular automaton. PHCA is a hardware implementation of a general purpose cellular automaton (CA) entirely programmable. The heart of this structure is a PE array with reconfigurable side links allowing the implementation of a 2D CA or a 1D CA. As an illustration of a PHCA program, we present the implementation of a symmetric cryptography algorithm called ISEA for Ising spin encryption algorithm. Indeed ISEA is based on a 2D Ising spin lattice presenting random series of disordered spin configurations. The main idea of ISEA is to use this disorder to encrypt data. Efficiency of ISEA and PHCA implementation results are given.