As enterprises expand their use of Confidential Computing in the cloud and in AI infrastructure, the security of the underlying hardware is more critical than ever. Organizations and their customers need confidence not only in the software they deploy, but also in the silicon and firmware executing their most sensitive workloads.
AMD and Microsoft are collaborating to demonstrate how signing and transparency can strengthen trust in the semiconductor supply chain. By combining AMD Device Provenance with Microsoft’s Artifact Signing and Signing Transparency, we are exploring how device provenance, signing, and transparency could work together to support independently verifiable hardware evidence.
Why Hardware Provenance Needs Transparency
Provenance evidence is most useful when it can be independently verified and evaluated alongside related supply chain evidence. Semiconductor manufacturers generate evidence across selected manufacturing and lifecycle stages, which may describe relevant device attributes, manufacturing events, and validation activities.
A digitally signed record establishes who issued information and its integrity. Individual signatures alone do not provide a durable and independently verifiable record of the order in which they were issued, whether they were recorded consistently, or whether unexpected activity occurred in the interval.
Transparency addresses this gap.
Microsoft's Signing Transparency leverages confidential computing to create a verified, tamper-evident record of signing events, allowing customers and auditors to confirm that evidence was recorded and has not been silently changed or been removed. It applies the Zero Trust principle of “trust but Verify” by giving relying parties cryptographic proof they can evaluate directly.
Extending Transparency from Software to Silicon
Microsoft's Signing Transparency was designed to address software supply chain threats that traditional code signing alone cannot fully prevent. The same principles can be applied to firmware, hardware provenance, and other evidence generated across the physical supply chain.
AMD Device Provenance is designed to provide visibility into the manufacturing and lifecycle of data center components. Through our collaboration, AMD and Microsoft are demonstrating how this evidence can be signed, made transparent, and independently validated.
This approach provides several important benefits:
- Transparent provenance: Changes to signed hardware evidence can be detected rather than silently accepted.
- Independent validation: Customers can independently validate the integrity, signing history, and transparency records associated with provenance evidence while still applying their own trust requirements to the evidence issuer.
- Stronger accountability: Transparency creates a durable record of signing events, providing evidence that can help identify unexpected patterns or unauthorized signatures.
- Audit and compliance evidence: Verifiable records may help inform supplier assessments, regulatory inquiries, and internal due diligence.
- Standards-based portability: Evidence can be validated across organizational boundaries using interoperable IETF specifications, including RFC 9943, An Architecture for Trustworthy and Transparent Digital Supply Chains, RFC 9942, CBOR Object Signing and Encryption Receipts, and RFC 9995, CBOR Object Signing and Encryption Hash Envelope, rather than proprietary trust mechanisms.
Together, these capabilities allow relying parties to verify the origin, integrity, registration, and device binding of manufacturer-issued provenance evidence.
Learn More at OCP Global Summit
At OCP Global Summit 2026, AMD and Microsoft will present a proof-of-concept demonstration that prototypes how these components could operate together. Visit the AMD (#C61) booth to see the demonstration and learn how AMD and Microsoft are advancing semiconductor supply chain security. To dive deeper into the demo details read AMD’s blog Advancing Semiconductor Supply Chain Assurance.
Organizations interested in applying Artifact Signing and Signing Transparency to software, firmware, or hardware can also join the Artifact Signing with Signing Transparency preview community to learn more and help shape the future of the service.
Microsoft
