The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Oct. 04, 2016
Filed:
Jun. 24, 2013
Maxim Integrated Products, Inc., San Jose, CA (US);
Sung Ung Kwak, Frisco, TX (US);
Donald Wood Loomis, III, Coppell, TX (US);
Edward Tangkwai Ma, Plano, TX (US);
Robert Michael Muchsel, Addison, TX (US);
Pirooz Parvarandeh, Los Altos Hills, CA (US);
Maxim Integrated Products, Inc., San Jose, CA (US);
Abstract
The invention relates to semiconductor devices, and more particularly, to systems, devices and methods of utilizing inherent differences among physical elements in an electrical component to generate unique and non-duplicable numbers that are statistically random and repeatable. These bits may be applied as identifications, random number seeds or encryption keys in many security applications, e.g., a financial terminal. An integrator is coupled to a plurality of physical elements, selects two physical elements or element sets, and generates an integrated difference signal according to a difference between these two physical elements or element sets. A comparison-decision logic further determines whether the difference between the selected two physical elements is associated with a bit of '1' or '0'. In some embodiments, a multi-bit number constitutes multiple bits each of which may be derived from a difference between two randomly selected physical elements or element sets.