RELIABILITY, SECURITY AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY IN ELECTRONIC DEVICES AND CIRCUITS FOR IOT EDGE (TIRELESS-UAB)

THE TIRELESS PROJECT TACKLES THE VARIABILITY CONUNDRUM IN ELECTRONIC DEVICES AND INTEGRATED CIRCUITS AND AIMS AT UNRAVELING THE ASSOCIATED CHALLENGES OF RELIABILITY, SECURITY AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY, WITH ONE PARTICULAR ELECTRONIC SYSTEM IN MIND: THE INTERNET-OF-THINGS (IOT) EDGE DEVICES. THESE ARE POWERED BY NANOELECTRONIC CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS, WHICH EXPLOIT NANO-CMOS DEVICES AND, IN THE NEAR FUTURE, BEYOND-CMOS DEVICES. ALL THESE TECHNOLOGIES ARE PLAGUED WITH A PLETHORA OF VARIABILITY-RELATED PHENOMENA, WITH MULTIPLE ASPECTS IN RELATION TO THE CHALLENGES ABOVE. INADEQUATE HANDLING OF THE VARIABILITY IMPACT GOES AGAINST ENERGY EFFICIENCY SINCE GUARANTEEING CERTAIN PERFORMANCES UNDER PARAMETRIC VARIATIONS USUALLY IMPLIES OVERDESIGN INCLUDING, MORE OFTEN THAN NOT, ADDITIONAL ENERGY CONSUMPTION. CONSIDERING VARIABILITY, AT DESIGN TIME AND/OR DURING OPERATION, IS ALSO ESSENTIAL TO EXTEND THE LIFETIME OF THE INTEGRATED CIRCUIT AND TO ENSURE RELIABILITY AND SAFETY. LAST BUT NOT LEAST, SOME OF THE VARIABILITY PHENOMENA CAN BE EXPLOITED FOR LIGHTWEIGHT CYBERSECURITY SOLUTIONS, ESSENTIAL IN TINY IOT EDGE DEVICES. ACCORDINGLY, THIS PROJECT ADDRESSES THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE RELIABILITY, CYBERSECURITY AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY OF IOT ELEMENTS BY EXPLOITING NEW SOLUTIONS FOR: DEVICE CHARACTERIZATION AND MODELING IN NANO-CMOS AND BEYOND-CMOS TECHNOLOGIES, IMPACT EVALUATION IN CIRCUITS, CIRCUIT DESIGN, CRYPTOGRAPHIC HARDWARE PRIMITIVES AND EMERGING DESIGN PARADIGMS. FROM THE RELIABILITY AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY POINT OF VIEW, TIRELESS-UAB WILL DEVELOP A LAB DIGITAL TWIN AND SMART RTN CHARACTERIZATION TECHNIQUES TO ELABORATE PARAMETER EXTRACTION METHODOLOGIES OF TIME-DEPENDENT VARIABILITY (TDV) IN NANO-CMOS DEVICES WITH DRAMATICALLY ENHANCED ACCURACY AND EFFICIENCY. VARIABILITY AND RELIABILITY OF BEYOND-CMOS DEVICES, IN PARTICULAR OF GFETS, TFTS AND MEMRISTORS, WILL BE ADDRESSED. WHEN COMPARED TO CMOS, THESE TECHNOLOGIES ARE MUCH MORE IMMATURE, SO THAT, FOR GFETS AND TFTS, TIME-ZERO VARIABILITY (TZV) IS PREDOMINANTLY RELATED TO THE IMMATURITY OF THE FABRICATION TECHNOLOGY AND TDV KNOWLEDGE IS LIMITED. THIS SCENARIO REQUIRES A COMPREHENSIVE MULTISCALE CHARACTERIZATION OF THEIR TZV AND TDV. WITH THIS AIM, ARRAYS OF DEVICES WILL BE DESIGNED AND FABRICATED AND A SUITABLE TESTING METHODOLOGY DEVELOPED TO EVALUATE THEIR TZV (ALSO AT THE NANOSCALE, WITH AFM-BASED TECHNIQUES), TO IMPROVE PERFORMANCE AND YIELD, AND TDV, TO IDENTIFY THE AGING MECHANISMS LINKED TO THEIR RELIABILITY. TZV AND TDV WILL BE INTRODUCED INTO DEVICE COMPACT MODELS, BY DEVELOPING SUITABLE MODEL PARAMETER EXTRACTION AND CIRCUIT RELIABILITY SIMULATION METHODOLOGIES, AS A FIRST STAGE FOR RELIABILITY-AWARE CIRCUIT DESIGN IN THESE TECHNOLOGIES. NEW COMPUTING ARCHITECTURES, SUCH AS NEUROMORPHIC SYSTEMS, WILL ALSO BE NEEDED, WHICH CAN BE IMPLEMENTED WITH MEMRISTORS CROSSBARS. TIRELESS-UAB WILL STUDY THE MEMRISTOR STOCHASTIC RESONANCE (SR) PHENOMENON IN THESE CROSSBARS, FOR ITS EVENTUAL EXPLOITATION IN UNSUPERVISED LEARNING ALGORITHMS. FROM THE CYBERSECURITY POINT OF VIEW, DEVICE VARIABILITY IN NANO-CMOS AND BEYOND-CMOS TECHNOLOGIES WILL BE EXPLOITED AS A SOURCE OF ENTROPY FOR PHYSICAL UNCLONABLE FUNCTIONS FOR IDENTIFICATION AND AUTHENTICATION PURPOSES AS WELL AS FOR TRUE RANDOM NUMBER GENERATION. TIRELESS-UAB WILL FOCUS ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF TRNGS IN NANO-CMOS TECHNOLOGIES AND TRNGS AND PUFS WITH BEYOND-CMOS DEVICES.