Application of Resistive Random Access Memory in Hardware Security: A Review

Nowadays, advancements in the design of trusted system environments are relying on security provided by hardware-based primitives, while replacing resource-hungry software security measures. Emerging nonvolatile memory devices are promising candidates to provide the required hardware security functionalities at very low area-energy-runtime budget. Resistive random access memory (RRAM) offers high-density integration with outstanding performance among the state-of-the-art nonvolatile memory devices. The RRAM device technology is currently getting significant attention from both academia and industry for constructing beyond Von Neumann architectures. This technology's strength is its scalable two-terminal structure, the availability of wide range of functional materials, and multi-bit storage capability. The fluctuations in switching resistances, random telegraph noise, and sneak path current are detrimental characteristics of RRAM integrations for storage and in-memory computing applications, and more research focuses on alleviating these effects. Interestingly, these characteristics make them suitable for designing security hardware. In recent times, there has been significant progress in the design and analysis of RRAM-based security primitives such as, Physical Unclonable Function, true random number generator, and hash function. This review discusses the detailed developments in RRAM security and presents the demanded security requirement and available opportunities to be explored.

Automated summary

Advancements in trusted system environments now rely on hardware-based security provided by emerging nonvolatile memory devices like RRAM. RRAM offers high-density integration, outstanding performance, and multi-bit storage capability. These characteristics make RRAM suitable for designing security hardware, such as Physical Unclonable Function and hash function.