Enhancing reliability of a strong physical unclonable function (PUF) solution based on virgin-state phase change memory (PCM)

Abstract

In the era of the internet of things (IoT), hardware physical unclonable functions (PUFs) have become an essential feature for authentication of any system on chip (SoC). Identifying physical entropy sources is essential for developing low-cost, low-power, highly reliable PUFs. This work presents a new PUF circuit based on embedded PCM, called MVPUF. The new PUF relies on the random virgin state of the PCM combined with a new selection technique of challenge-response pairs (CRPs), thus showing better reliability compared to PUFs based on resistive switching memory (RRAM).