Tunable stochastic memristors for energy-efficient encryption and computing.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38622148.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-47488-x and PMC identifier 11018740.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Information security and computing, two critical technological challenges for post-digital computation, pose opposing requirements - security (encryption) requires a source of unpredictability, while computing generally requires predictability. Each of these contrasting requirements presently necessitates distinct conventional Si-based hardware units with power-hungry overheads. This work demonstrates Cu<sub>0.3</sub>Te<sub>0.7</sub>/HfO<sub>2</sub> ('CuTeHO') ion-migration-driven memristors that satisfy the contrasting requirements. Under specific operating biases, CuTeHO memristors generate truly random and physically unclonable functions, while under other biases, they perform universal Boolean logic. Using these computing primitives, this work experimentally demonstrates a single system that performs cryptographic key generation, universal Boolean logic operations, and encryption/decryption. Circuit-based calculations reveal the energy and latency advantages of the CuTeHO memristors in these operations. This work illustrates the functional flexibility of memristors in implementing operations with varying component-level requirements.