skip to main content
10.1145/2744769.2744909acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesdacConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Self-correcting STTRAM under magnetic field attacks

Published: 07 June 2015 Publication History

Abstract

Spin-Transfer Torque Random Access Memory (STTRAM) is a possible candidate for universal memory due to its high-speed, low-power, non-volatility, and low cost. Although attractive, STTRAM is susceptible to contactless tampering through malicious exposure to magnetic field with the intention to steal or modify the bitcell content. In this paper, for the first time to our knowledge, we analyze the impact of magnetic attacks on STTRAM using micro-magnetic simulations. Next, we propose a novel array-based sensor to detect the polarity and magnitude of such attacks and then propose two design techniques to mitigate the attack, namely, array sleep with encoding and variable strength Error Correction Code (ECC). Simulation results indicate that the proposed sensor can reliably detect an attack and provide sufficient compensation window (few ns to ~100us) to enable proactive protection measures. Finally, we shows that variable-strength ECC can adapt correction capability to tolerate failures with various strength of an attack.

References

[1]
Driskill-Smith, A. Latest advances and future prospects of STT-RAM. In Non-Volatile Memories Workshop. 2010.
[2]
J.-G. Zhu, "Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory: Path to Competiveness and Scalability", Proceedings of the IEEE, 2008.
[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet.
[4]
Kryder, Mark H et al. "After hard drives---What comes next?." Magnetics, IEEE Transactions on 45, no. 10 (2009): 3406--3413.
[5]
SGMI Research Themes & Subjects. Online: http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/html/news-events/file/SGMI_Request_for_Proposal.pdf
[6]
Zhang, Jianwei et al. Identification of transverse spin currents in noncollinear magnetic structures. Physical review letters 93, no. 25 (2004): 256602.
[7]
Kultursay, Emre, Mahmut Kandemir, Anand Sivasubramaniam, and Onur Mutlu. "Evaluating STT-RAM as an energy-efficient main memory alternative." In Performance Analysis of Systems and Software (ISPASS), 2013 IEEE International Symposium on, pp. 256--267. IEEE, 2013.
[8]
E. Chen et al. Advances and Future Prospects of Spin-Transfer Torque Random Access Memory. Magnetics, IEEE Transactions on, 46(6), June 2010.
[9]
Donahue, Michael Joseph et al. OOMMF User's guide. US Department of Commerce, Technology Administration, National Institute of Standards and Technology, 1999.
[10]
Nikonov, D. Online Lecture, Topic: "Course on Beyond CMOS Computing." June. 06, 2013. https://nanohub.org/resources/18347
[11]
Srinivasan, Srikant. "All spin logic: Modeling multi-magnet networks interacting via spin currents." (2012).
[12]
Behin-Aein, Behtash et al, "Proposal for an all-spin logic device with built-in memory", Nature nanotechnology 5, no. 4 (2010): 266--270.
[13]
J. Park et al. "Dynamic Bit-width Adaptation in DCT: An Approach for Trade off Image Quality and Computation Energy", IEEE Trans. on VLSI, vol. 18, no. 5, pp. 787--793, May 2010.
[14]
S. Lin et al, Error Control Coding, 2nd ed. Prentice Hall, 2004.
[15]
S. Paul et al, "Reliability-Driven ECC Allocation for Multiple Bit Error Resilience in Processor Cache", IEEE Trans. Comput. 2011.

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)Assessing Magnetic Attack on Commercial 40nm pMTJ STT-MRAM2024 IEEE Physical Assurance and Inspection of Electronics (PAINE)10.1109/PAINE62042.2024.10792779(1-6)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2024
  • (2021)Adaptive MRAM Write and Read with MTJ Variation MonitorIEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing10.1109/TETC.2018.28662899:1(402-413)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2021
  • (2020)SMART: A Secure Magnetoelectric AntifeRromagnet-Based Tamper-Proof Non-Volatile MemoryIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2020.29888898(76130-76142)Online publication date: 2020
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. Self-correcting STTRAM under magnetic field attacks

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Conferences
    DAC '15: Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Design Automation Conference
    June 2015
    1204 pages
    ISBN:9781450335201
    DOI:10.1145/2744769
    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]

    Sponsors

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 07 June 2015

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. STTRAM
    2. contactless tampering
    3. magnetic field attack
    4. on-chip tamper mitigation
    5. replica
    6. variable ECC

    Qualifiers

    • Research-article

    Funding Sources

    Conference

    DAC '15
    Sponsor:
    DAC '15: The 52nd Annual Design Automation Conference 2015
    June 7 - 11, 2015
    California, San Francisco

    Acceptance Rates

    Overall Acceptance Rate 1,770 of 5,499 submissions, 32%

    Upcoming Conference

    DAC '25
    62nd ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference
    June 22 - 26, 2025
    San Francisco , CA , USA

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)19
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)4
    Reflects downloads up to 14 Feb 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)Assessing Magnetic Attack on Commercial 40nm pMTJ STT-MRAM2024 IEEE Physical Assurance and Inspection of Electronics (PAINE)10.1109/PAINE62042.2024.10792779(1-6)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2024
    • (2021)Adaptive MRAM Write and Read with MTJ Variation MonitorIEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing10.1109/TETC.2018.28662899:1(402-413)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2021
    • (2020)SMART: A Secure Magnetoelectric AntifeRromagnet-Based Tamper-Proof Non-Volatile MemoryIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2020.29888898(76130-76142)Online publication date: 2020
    • (2020)Security of Emerging Memory ChipsEmerging Topics in Hardware Security10.1007/978-3-030-64448-2_14(357-390)Online publication date: 10-Nov-2020
    • (2019)Test Methodologies and Test-Time Compression for Emerging Non-Volatile MemoryIEEE Transactions on Reliability10.1109/TR.2019.2919466(1-11)Online publication date: 2019
    • (2019)Cache Bypassing and Checkpointing to Circumvent Data Security Attacks on STTRAMIEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing10.1109/TETC.2017.26538137:2(262-270)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2019
    • (2019)Meeting the Conflicting Goals of Low-Power and Resiliency Using Emerging Memories : (Invited Paper)2019 IEEE 25th International Symposium on On-Line Testing and Robust System Design (IOLTS)10.1109/IOLTS.2019.8854412(224-227)Online publication date: Jul-2019
    • (2019)Threat Models and Security of Phase-Change Memory2019 IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE)10.1109/ICCE.2019.8662100(1-6)Online publication date: Jan-2019
    • (2018)Novel application of spintronics in computing, sensing, storage and cybersecurity2018 Design, Automation & Test in Europe Conference & Exhibition (DATE)10.23919/DATE.2018.8341991(125-130)Online publication date: Mar-2018
    • (2018)Information Leakage Attacks on Emerging Non-Volatile Memory and CountermeasuresProceedings of the International Symposium on Low Power Electronics and Design10.1145/3218603.3218649(1-6)Online publication date: 23-Jul-2018
    • Show More Cited By

    View Options

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Figures

    Tables

    Media

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media