Building Robust and Practical PUFs with Configurable Ring Oscillators

Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) is one of the most promising hardware features that can be utilized to improve system security. Ring Oscillator (RO) PUF captures the delay difference of a pair or a group of ROs introduced during fabrication process and defines PUF secrecy based on such difference. In this project, we propose a framework to build RO PUF at inverter level, instead of RO level. This will provide us the flexibility in choosing whether an inverter should be included in the RO-PUF and hence improve the security and reliability of RO PUF secrecy and reduce its hardware cost. We anticipate the successful completion of this project will have direct impact on the hardware related design for trustworthy computing, which is of critical importance for cyber warfighting. Silicon PUF, despite its great promise in enhancing systems security and trustworthiness, will not be adopted in real systems unless its high hardware inefficiency and unreliability issues are solved. This research will provide a timely solution to these problems and thus will have huge impact on security and trustworthy computing.