A DPA-Resistant Asynchronous-Logic NoC Router with Dual-Supply-Voltage-Scaling for Multicore Cryptographic Applications

We propose a 5-port asynchronous-logic Network-on-Chip (ANoC) router based on the Sense-Amplifier Half-Buffer (SAHB) approach for cryptographic processing cores to counteract side channel attack differential power analysis (DPA) in multicore platform. There are three features in the proposed DPA-resistant ANoC router. First, the proposed ANoC router embodies dual-supply-voltage SAHB cells, where the non-critical subsidiary supply voltage is adjustable from 0.3V to 1.2V, increasing the noise variance and hence reducing the Signal-to-Noise (SNR) ratio to hide the information leakage. Second, the proposed ANoC router performs as a noise engine by increasing the number of power-on IO ports, further randomizing the overall power dissipation. Third, the proposed ANoC router can switch between DPA-resistant mode and energy-efficient nominal (non-secure) mode, saving the power dissipation when the DPA secure countermeasure is unnecessary. Based on 65nm CMOS process, the multicore platform embedded with the proposed ANoC router is implemented, and the experiment is demonstrated by running the advanced encryption standard (AES) cryptography operation. When benchmarked against the nominal mode, the noise power variance of the proposed ANoC router increases by 2.3× in the DPA-resistant mode, reducing the overall SNR ratio by 56%. When comparing to other reported noise engines, our proposed ANoC router is one of the most DPA-secure, area-efficient and power-efficient designs for multicore cryptographic applications.