Power Side-Channel Attacks in Negative Capacitance Transistor (NCFET)

TL;DR

This paper investigates the vulnerability of Negative Capacitance Transistor (NCFET) technology to power side-channel attacks, revealing increased resilience due to negative capacitance effects and exploring optimization trade-offs.

Contribution

First to analyze PSC attack resilience in NCFET technology using a CAD flow and industry-standard tools, highlighting its increased resistance compared to CMOS.

Findings

NCFET circuits are more resistant to CPA attacks.

Thicker ferroelectric layers enhance NCFET resilience.

Negative capacitance impacts switching power and security.

Abstract

Side-channel attacks have empowered bypassing of cryptographic components in circuits. Power side-channel (PSC) attacks have received particular traction, owing to their non-invasiveness and proven effectiveness. Aside from prior art focused on conventional technologies, this is the first work to investigate the emerging Negative Capacitance Transistor (NCFET) technology in the context of PSC attacks. We implement a CAD flow for PSC evaluation at design-time. It leverages industry-standard design tools, while also employing the widely-accepted correlation power analysis (CPA) attack. Using standard-cell libraries based on the 7nm FinFET technology for NCFET and its counterpart CMOS setup, our evaluation reveals that NCFET-based circuits are more resilient to the classical CPA attack, due to the considerable effect of negative capacitance on the switching power. We also demonstrate that the thicker the ferroelectric layer, the higher the resiliency of the NCFET-based circuit, which opens new doors for optimization and trade-offs.