Dual Use Components

Many of our front-end devices are classified ‘dual-use’ because of their radiation hardness and hence are subject to export restrictions. This means they can only be shipped to institutes or companies by following a specific procedure. The export control concerns all formats : wafers, bare dies, packaged ASICs or boards containing these chips.

Note that FPGAs and modules on which they are mounted are also classified as dual-use if they fulfill certain criteria.

Information on these pages is applicable to exports from CERN of CERN-designed ASICs. Institutes outside CERN must follow the rules of their national regulatory body with regards to dual-use goods.

Country of Destination

The procedure for shipping to institutes or companies depends on the country of destination and the country of manufacturing of the device. In some cases a specific export authorisation in the form of a license is required. More details are given below.

Return of goods after a temporary export

All dual-use items temporarily exported under a license must be returned to CERN. This includes items that would be normally be destroyed as waste, for example chips that are rejected by a testing or packaging procedure. It is the responsibility of the exporter to ensure that all such waste material is returned to CERN. When goods are returned to CERN after a temporary export, the user must keep all related documentation (covering documents from the company/institute, transport documents from a shipping company, CERN reception documents etc) as evidence that all material was correctly returned to CERN.

Compliance Letters

Any institute or company that will receive dual-use components from CERN must sign a compliance letter. This letter states that the receiving institute or company agrees to follow all restrictions applied to the use of these components (e.g. that they will not be used for military applications) and that it will follow all export regulations.

There are three types of compliance letter for export from CERN (templates available here):

• One concerning components using GF technologies
• One concerning components using TSMC technologies
• One concerning BPOL12V and linPOL12V

These letters are to be signed by an authorised person of the institute or company and should include a logo of the institute or company. To check if an institute or company already signed the appropriate letter, please contact ASIC Distribution.

In the case that the receiving institute or company has to ship the components to another place (e.g. to an assembly company to build boards), care must be taken that this secondary recipient is aware of the restrictions. To do so, the principal institute or company must write a compliance letter similar to the one issued by CERN but with “CERN” replaced by the name of the institute, and ask the secondary recipient to sign it. This letter does not have to be sent back to CERN, but to the principal institute or company who received the goods from CERN.

Classification codes.

These are used for shipping documents and are known as ECCN codes (Export Control Classification Number).

For radiation-tolerant ASICs, the code is usually 3A001.a.1.a.

For information: Many commonly-used FPGAs are classified with one of the following codes:

3A001.a.7.a or 3A991.d (criteria related to number I/Os)

3A001.a.7.b (criterion related to the transceiver data rate)

The ECCN code of an FPGA can be found in the device specifications available at the manufacturers website.

Specific Export Authorisation

A specific authorization (export license) is necessary for some countries. Two cases should be considered:

Useful links

US export rules can be found here. Click on Category 3 for all information regarding electronics.

EU dual-use rules can be found here. Follow the link below the heading ‘The EU export control system’ to find the list of goods and definitions in Annex 1. Electronics items are in Category 3.

BAFA website for Germany (in English). Click on ”Export control & academia’ for summary documents.

Swiss rules can be found here. Click on ‘Foreign Trade & Economic Cooperation’, then scroll down under ‘Economic Relations’ and click on ‘Export Controls & Sanctions’, then ‘Export Controls of Industrial Goods’, then ‘Legal Basis’, then “ordinance on the Export….’, scroll down to ‘Annexes 1 and 2’, then follow the link described under ‘List of dual-use goods’.