Vulnerability of In-Memory Compute to Hardware Trojans: A Case Study using Two-dimensional Memtransistor

A. Wali, H. Ravichandran, S. Das
Pennsylvania State University,
United States

Keywords: hardware trojans, hardware security, 2D materials, in-memory computing

Summary:

Hardware trojans (HTs) have emerged as a major security threat for integrated circuits (ICs) owing to the involvement of untrustworthy actors in the globally distributed semiconductor supply chain. HTs are intentional malicious modifications, which remain undetectable through simple electrical measurements but can cause catastrophic failure in the functioning of the ICs in mission critical applications. In this article, we show the vulnerability of in-memory compute, an emerging non-von Neumann computing paradigm to HT owing to its increasing popularity in data-intensive computing applications such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, optimization etc. We use two-dimensional memtransistors-based ICs as the testbed for our demonstration, although the results are equally applicable to any state-of-the-art and emerging in-memory compute technologies.