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Secure Memristor-based Main Memory

Published: 01 June 2014 Publication History

Abstract

Non-volatile memory devices such as phase change memories and memristors are promising alternatives to SRAM and DRAM main memories as they provide higher density and improved energy efficiency. However, non-volatile main memories (NVMM) introduce security vulnerabilities. Sensitive data such as passwords and keys residing in the NVMM will persist and can be probed after power down. We propose sneak-path encryption (SPE), for memristor-based NVMM. SPE exploits the physical parameters, multilevel cell (MLC) capability and the sneak paths in crossbar memories to encrypt the data stored in memristor-based NVMM. We investigate three attacks on NVMMs and show the resilience of SPE against them. We use a cycle accurate simulator to evaluate the security and performance impact of SPE based NVMM. SPE can secure the NVMM with a latency of 16 cycles and ~1.5% performance overhead.

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Cited By

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  • (2015)Security Vulnerabilities of Emerging Nonvolatile Main Memories and CountermeasuresIEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems10.1109/TCAD.2014.236974134:1(2-15)Online publication date: Jan-2015
  • (2015)A survey on memristor modeling and security applicationsSixteenth International Symposium on Quality Electronic Design10.1109/ISQED.2015.7085466(440-447)Online publication date: Mar-2015
  1. Secure Memristor-based Main Memory

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      cover image ACM Other conferences
      DAC '14: Proceedings of the 51st Annual Design Automation Conference
      June 2014
      1249 pages
      ISBN:9781450327305
      DOI:10.1145/2593069
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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      Published: 01 June 2014

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      • (2015)Security Vulnerabilities of Emerging Nonvolatile Main Memories and CountermeasuresIEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems10.1109/TCAD.2014.236974134:1(2-15)Online publication date: Jan-2015
      • (2015)A survey on memristor modeling and security applicationsSixteenth International Symposium on Quality Electronic Design10.1109/ISQED.2015.7085466(440-447)Online publication date: Mar-2015

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