Marvell International Limited

Marvell Asia Pte., Ltd.

Jun Yu

Minda Zhang

Tolga Nihat Aytek

Nilotpal Sensarkar

Chen Liu

Kaichuan Chang

The present disclosure describes apparatuses and methods for implementing secure verification of a physical unclonable function (PUF). In various aspects, a PUF verifier generates a PUF reagent value by obtaining a key from a PUF and a message value useful for PUF verification. The PUF verifier computes a digest value of the PUF key and the message value and selects a portion of the hash digest as a PUF reagent value. The PUF verifier writes the PUF reagent value to a non-volatile memory to enable subsequent verification of the PUF. The PUF verifier may also generate error-correction code information for the PUF reagent value and write this information to the non-volatile memory to enable error correction. Upon device hardware reset, the PUF verifier can securely verify PUF operation by generating a PUF key hash digest and comparing the hash digest with the PUF reagent value without exposing the PUF key.

Secure verification of physical unclonable function

The present disclosure describes apparatuses and techniques for secure root key provisioning. In some aspects, a stream of entropy bits is generated based on analog noise. From the stream of entropy bits, entropy symbols are constructed and used to modulate bits of a unique chip identifier to provide a block of modulated symbols. A hash digest of the block of modulated symbols is then calculated to generate a device-level root key. This device-level root key written to a write-only register of a one-time programmable (OTP) memory controller for subsequent writing into an OTP memory. By so doing, unauthorized entities can be prevented from accessing the device-level root key during the secure key provisioning process.

Methods and apparatus for secure root key provisioning

Growing community of inventors

Northborough, MA, United States of America

Jun Yu