Hardware Trojan prevention using memristor technology

Abstract

The design of modern integrated circuits includes many steps and different entities providing opportunities to adversaries for Trojan injection or IP (intellectual property) piracy at different design levels. Hardware Trojans and IP piracy are the new realities that must be taken into consideration for trustworthy integrated circuit design. In this work, a new method utilizing memristor technology is presented to implement a configurable layout to obfuscate the design. In the proposed solution, the main design is divided into clusters of sub-circuits in which interconnects between the clusters are not known to anyone other than the designer. The clusters are then connected through configurable memristor switches. In the proposed solution, split manufacturing is not needed, and the integrated circuit/IP core can be fabricated by an untrusted foundry without compromising the security. Moreover, the clustering technique provides direct access to the sub-circuits through the network of configurable switches. This will increase the observability and controllability in the test phase and assists the detection and isolation of possible Trojans.