PUF Cafe News: November/December 2021

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Hi everyone and welcome to the very first episode of PUF Cafe News, a new video series where – in only a few minutes – we will provide you with an overview of the PUF technology articles and news items that caught our attention in the past weeks or months. With a finger on the pulse of the latest PUF technology developments we want to show you the great progress the technology has made and just how broad the market adoption of PUF technology really is. And this November/December period has not let us down with a lot of very exciting PUF news to report on. So, let’s dive straight into our overview!

  • Early in November, the Korean mobile carrier LG Uplus announced it has developed a small built-in subscriber identity module that includes a PUF from Korean vendor ICTK. The module is an embedded SIM, which is a form of programmable SIM, and the vendors claim that the production cost of this module is about 30% lower than regular eSIM solutions.
  • PUF vendor PUFsecurity published an interview with Serge Leef from DARPA, about the DARPA Toolbox initiative, of which PUFsecurity is a contributing IP vendor. The DARPA Toolbox Initiative aims to provide leading semiconductor design tools and IP to research teams performing R&D projects, to enhance US national security and competitiveness. In this interview Serge Leef explains how the Toolbox initiative works.
  • PUF vendor Crypto Quantique announced they recently collaborated with BT Labs in a TMForum Catalyst project, where BT Labs retrofitted Crypto Quatique’s PUF hardware and software security platform on a smart factory model. The companies state that they will continue to explore potential use cases together.
  • PUF vendor Intrinsic ID announced a partnership with Root of Trust provider Rambus. The companies state that because of this partnership, their customers no longer need to invest resources into integration of the solutions from both companies, as this integration is now available off the shelf.
  • Non-volatile memory vendor Macronix announced they had won in multiple categories of the EE Awards Asia. The reason to mention this news in this overview is that they accredit their focus on security as a reason for winning, stating that one of their features is a unique physical unclonable function.
  • Innosilicon Technology announced the launch of their latest high-performance GPU. And again, why is this part of this overview? Because they explicitly mention the use of a PUF as one of the features of this new GPU.
  • The University of Florida announced the availability of their new “Memory-in-Logic” PUF, which takes advantage of existing reconfigurable logic elements on an FPGA to create memory cells that possess PUF characteristics on the programmable fabric. Using this approach, their researchers are able to create device-unique fingerprints on generic FPGA devices.
  • Korean tech giant Samsung also had a big announcement when it comes to PUF technology. Samsung introduced three new automotive chips, including the Exynos Auto V7 processor that is equipped with a PUF in its isolated security processor to store the device’s secret key for strong data protection.
  • NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, has released a draft version of a white paper about a new method for machine-learning analysis. The most interesting part of this paper for our overview is that the NIST researchers illustrate the use of this new method by performing a machine-learning attack on an Arbiter PUF.
  • Secure Thingz, who focus on device security, embedded systems, and lifecycle management, announced a partnership with PUF vendor Intrinsic ID. The partnership is aimed at securing the IoT supply chain, as it enables rapid development, implementation, and provisioning of unique and secure identities for IoT applications.

And this news brings us to the end of this overview for PUF Cafe News that has shown just how much is going on in the world of PUF technology. New devices are being equipped with PUFs, strategic alliances are being forged, and new PUF solutions are still being introduced. This is a great testament to the momentum that this technology has gathered by now.

For those who want to learn more about any of the news mentioned here, the links to each of these items are listed below this video on pufcafe.com. If you have news that you would like us to consider for our next episode, please contact us at support@pufcafe.com.

Thank you for watching and see you again soon for another episode of PUF Cafe News!