Trends in Hardware Security: from Basics to ASICs

Abstract

This article presents an excerpt of the tutorial on hardware security delivered at the ISSCC 2019 conference [A19], and introduces a performance scaling trend perspective. The latter provides an insight into the recent and the foreseeable evolution of the state of the art, both in terms of technical advances and new directions to be pursued. Technology trends are identified by introducing new public databases summarizing the state of the art, such as the Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFdb) and the hardware security database (HWsecdb). A reasoned review of prior art in circuits and sub-systems for hardware security is also presented, covering from the very basics to best-in-class silicon demonstrations. Giving emphasis on ubiquitous (i.e., down to low-end devices) and always-on security, the review of prior art focuses on solutions that are suitable for tightly energy- and area-constrained systems.