RingRAM: A Unified Hardware SecurityPrimitive for IoT Devices that Gets Better with Age

As security grows in importance, system designers turn to hardware support for security. Hardware’s unique properties enable functionality and performance levels not available with software alone. One unique property of hardware is non-determinism. Unlike software, which is inherently deterministic (e.g., the same inputs produce the same outputs), hardware encompasses an abundance of non-determinism; non-determinism born out of manufacturing and operational chaos. While hardware designers focus on hiding the effects of such chaos behind voltage and clock frequency guard bands, security practitioners embrace the chaos as a source of randomness.