Project Description

Overview

Our task for BRIDG was to test the ReRAM wafers sent to us in order to verify how effective they are. Another responsibility we had was to test older wafers to see how the resistances hold up over time. Since BRIDG is creating these experiemental wafers, they did not have the means to test them in house, so the company recruited a capstone team as well as a graduate student, Taylor, to help with the task. Our final task was to get the wafers sent out for packaging if there was a high enough yield, but unfortunately we did not find a wafer suitable.

Benefits and Applications

-Extremely secure physical circuits, very hard to be hacked remotely

-Low power and radiation tolerant

-Used directly on the microprocessor to create a unique key for encryption

-Secure even with quantum computing on the rise

-Based on physical variations that occur naturally in the production of semiconductors

Design Decisions and Tradeoffs

The first main problem we encountered was the lab we were testing the wafers in were small labs that generally always had people working in it. A lot of times we had to work around the schedules of the lab worker because if they needed the space for a meeting or their own testing we were not allowed to use the lab. The second main problem we had was how infrequently the wafers were sent to us. We only received one batch of wafers the entire year that came in around March. Unfortunately, we were not able to do a lot of testing of the new wafers because at that time we all were placed in quarantine. Most of the testing we were able to accomplish was from old wafers that we tested for decay.

Key Tasks and Activities

In order to learn more about ReRAM and PUFs, the team did much research on how they work and what purpose they serve. Alana and Richard also had the opportunity to learn more from Dr. Cambou’s INF 638 and INF 639 classes, where they learned how to implement PUFs for purposes such as cryptography and hardware security. In these courses, they also learned how a typical array of ReRAM cells are produced and used, which offered much insight into the design used by BRIDG.