Emerging nonvolatile memories (NVMs), such as resistive RAM (RRAM) and spin-transfer-torque RAM (STTRAM), present exciting opportunities for data storage applications and offer improved access speeds, retention times, power consumption, and scalability. However, these technologies leak the Hamming weight of data through power side-channel during read and write operations. We propose a technique leveraging on-chip capacitor and voltage regulator (VR) that powers the NVM read/write operations. The side-channel leakage is eliminated due to the isolation of memory array from the external power supply during read/write operations. The residual charge on capacitor bank is discarded safely to prevent information leakage during capacitor recharging. The VR ensures a steady voltage during the entire read/write operations even though the capacitor discharges. The design presents a performance (instructions per cycle) degradation of 0.53%–1.2% under parsec and splash-2 benchmarks and incurs an area overhead of $\sim 3.54\times 10^{-5}$ % and an energy overhead of $\sim 3.05 \times 10^{-5}$ % for a 4-Mb RRAM memory array. For a 64-bit word, the design improves security by 2.7 $\times \,\,10^{19} \times $ to $2^{64} \times $ . SecNVM should be used in small security-critical memory macros to limit the overhead. SecNVM is generic and could protect any security module such as encryption engines, against power side-channel attacks.

中文翻译：

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SecNVM：使用片上电容器消除电源侧通道，实现高度安全的新兴 NVM


电阻式 RAM (RRAM) 和自旋转移矩 RAM (STTRAM) 等新兴非易失性存储器 (NVM) 为数据存储应用带来了令人兴奋的机会，并提供了改进的访问速度、保留时间、功耗和可扩展性。然而，这些技术在读写操作期间通过电源侧通道泄漏数据的汉明权重。我们提出了一种利用片上电容器和电压调节器 (VR) 为 NVM 读/写操作供电的技术。由于在读/写操作期间存储器阵列与外部电源隔离，所以消除了侧通道泄漏。电容器组上的残余电荷被安全丢弃，以防止电容器充电期间的信息泄漏。即使电容器放电，VR 也可确保整个读/写操作期间电压稳定。该设计在秒差距和splash-2基准下表现出性能（每个周期指令数）下降0.53%–1.2%，并产生$\sim 3.54\times 10^{-5}$%的面积开销和$\sim 3.54\times 10^{-5}$%的能量开销对于 4 Mb RRAM 存储器阵列，\sim 3.05 \times 10^{-5}$ %。对于 64 位字，该设计将安全性提高了 2.7 $\times \,\,10^{19} \times $ 到 $2^{64} \times $ 。 SecNVM 应该用在小型安全关键型内存宏中，以限制开销。 SecNVM 是通用的，可以保护任何安全模块（例如加密引擎）免受电源侧信道攻击。