Patent ID: 7783994

Claim:
A secure and trusted application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) using three-dimensional (3D) integrated circuit (IC) integration, comprising: a 3D ASIC stack, including: a plurality of sub-circuits in which: each sub-circuit forms a separate layer of the 3D ASIC stack; each sub-circuit includes a plurality of input-output (IO) pads; each sub-circuit has an orientation point that indicates a compass orientation of the sub-circuit; and each sub-circuit is rotationally symmetrical so that each sub-circuit can be rotated so that its orientation point faces any one of a plurality of pre-determined orientation positions and still have IO pads align; and wherein the sub-circuits are stacked in the 3D ASIC stack according to a pre-determined integration order and each sub-circuit is oriented per each sub-circuit pre-determined orientation positions so that the overall 3D ASIC design is determinable only from the 3D ASIC stack and not the sub-circuits.