Physically unclonable function using CMOS breakdown position

TL;DR: In this paper, a physically unclonable function (PUF) utilizing the intrinsic randomness of oxide breakdown (BD) positions in CMOS transistors is presented and validated by measurements on test-chips fabricated in a commercial 40nm CMOS process.

Abstract: A novel physically unclonable function (PUF) utilizing the intrinsic randomness of oxide breakdown (BD) positions in CMOS transistors is presented The advantages of this approach are studied and validated by measurements on test-chips fabricated in a commercial 40nm CMOS process Experiments show that the required soft BDs can be reliably generated in a sufficiently short period The randomness of the utilized mechanism shows excellent properties, required for PUF applications: an overall bias of 0498 and inter-chip hamming distance (HD) of 0501 Further analysis of the current distributions reveals a dependence of operating voltage on readout resolution and window Finally, dedicated experiments with external heating and embedded poly-heaters show that these soft BDs are stable and show no read-out errors up to operating temperatures of 600K