Quantum phenomena cannot be predicted by the uncertainty principle. As a quantum phenomenon, radioactive decay has been used as an entropy source to generate random numbers. In this article, we present the design and development of an innovative quantum entropy chip (QEC) that produces analog random pulses when emitted alpha particles resulted from radioactive isotope (americium-241) decay hit the sensor. The analog pulse generated by a QEC can be digitized into random numbers by an entropy extractor. The QEC provides security foundation for device authentication as well as a quantum random number generator (QRNG), especially suited for the Internet of Things (IoT) devices due to its small size. We have successfully designed and fabricated the QEC as a wafer for supporting a system-on-chip (SoC) Internet Protocol (IP) so that the QEC can be embedded into a microcontroller unit (MCU) or central processing unit (CPU). In addition, we built a stochastic model to estimate the entropy of the quantum source and evaluated statistical randomness and robustness against temperature, voltage variations, aging effects, and physical attacks. Finally, we demonstrate various applications using the QEC such as side-channel-resistant primitives and device authentication.

中文翻译：

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QEC：量子熵芯片及其应用


量子现象无法通过不确定性原理来预测。作为一种量子现象，放射性衰变已被用作熵源来生成随机数。在本文中，我们介绍了一种创新量子熵芯片 (QEC) 的设计和开发，当放射性同位素 (镅-241) 衰变产生的发射 α 粒子撞击传感器时，该芯片会产生模拟随机脉冲。 QEC 生成的模拟脉冲可以通过熵提取器数字化为随机数。 QEC 为设备身份验证以及量子随机数生成器 (QRNG) 提供安全基础，由于其尺寸较小，特别适合物联网 (IoT) 设备。我们已成功设计和制造 QEC 作为支持片上系统 (SoC) 互联网协议 (IP) 的晶圆，以便 QEC 可以嵌入微控制器单元 (MCU) 或中央处理单元 (CPU) 中。此外，我们建立了一个随机模型来估计量子源的熵，并评估统计随机性和针对温度、电压变化、老化效应和物理攻击的鲁棒性。最后，我们演示了使用 QEC 的各种应用，例如抗侧信道原语和设备身份验证。