In-memory realization of SHA-2 using ReVAMP architecture

Abstract

Emerging non-volatile memory (NVM) technologies with computation capabilities have heralded a new era of non-Von Neumann computing models. Redox-based Resistive RAM (ReRAM) is a prominent NVM technology, which offers high density, low leakage power and ability to perform functionally complete set of Boolean operations. Multiple implementations with ReRAM have been used to demonstrate the benefit of inmemory computing architecture over traditional ones. In this manuscript, we focus on the in-memory implementation of authentication primitives, which are considered to be an important building block of diverse security, financial and communication protocols. In particular, we study the implementation of a standard authentication primitive, SHA-2 on ReRAM based inmemory computing architecture. We exploit the inherent parallelism offered by ReRAM crossbar array for the SHA-2 mapping. We have implemented our mapping on ReVAMP architecture, and estimated the performance on the basis of experimentally validated device models. Our novel mapping approach requires an extremely small compute memory of only 112 bytes, alongside an additional 5.7MB for instruction storage.