Reliability vs. security: Challenges and opportunities for developing reliable and secure integrated circuits

As technology further scales, devices offer better performance with faster speed and lower power albeit at the cost of reliability. Advanced technology nodes introduce higher variations in manufacturing processes, and devices experience greater aging and environmental degradation. Although such reliability issues should be suppressed for the sake of performance in both CMOS and post-CMOS devices, researchers have leveraged them for a variety of applications and unique primitives for hardware-oriented security. In this paper, we present a comprehensive study on device reliability and security, and make a qualitative assessment of different variability and degradation sources based on their impact on performance, reliability and security. We conclude that reliability and security both play vital roles for respective applications and must be treated in a holistic manner. Hence we urge the reliability and security communities to work together to develop new technologies for designing high performance, reliable and secure integrated circuits.