Design of a novel non‐volatile hybrid spintronic true random number generator

Abstract

AbstractTrue random number generators (TRNGs) are mainly used in cryptographic applications for the generation of various keys. A standard CMOS‐based TRNG utilizes physical phenomena such as thermal noise, metastability, and oscillator jitter to generate fully non‐deterministic random outputs but has high power dissipation and a large overhead area. In this work, we develop a novel low power non‐volatile TRNG circuit that utilizes the inherent stochastic switching nature of magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) as a randomness source. Thanks to the capabilities of MTJ and carbon nanotube field‐effect transistors (CNTFETs), the proposed TRNG circuit consumes low power when compared with conventional CMOS‐based TRNGs. The reliability of the proposed circuit is checked by running the corner case tests that considers all the process and environmental variations. The quality of the output bitstream is evaluated by running the twelve statistical randomness tests by the U.S National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The circuit passes all the tests, meaning the output bit‐stream is truly random. The circuit is designed in such a way that, even if the power is turned off, the quality of the randomness is not affected. The proposed TRNG structure has a less complex design and generates truly random output.