A Comparative Security Analysis of Current and Emerging Technologies

During the past few decades, the electronics community has witnessed a growing demand for packing more and more functionalities onto a single chip. The CMOS industry has been fulfilling this demand by continually shrinking the feature sizes, now down to the 20-nm regime. However, scaling of CMOS technology beyond 20 nm is challenging because of exacerbated short-channel effects, process variations, and reliability problems. These drawbacks of CMOS technology have led to the exploration of new nanotechnologies such as nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) and carbon nanotube (CNT). These emerging technologies are considered promising alternatives to CMOS technology because of their potential benefits in power, performance, and reliability. However, security analysis of these emerging technologies, which is critical for current pervasive applications, remains unaddressed. In this article, the authors offer a security analysis of NEMS and CNT. They highlight the key technology-specific features of these post-CMOS technologies that can inform the design of secure systems.