Provably-secure randomness generation from switching probability of magnetic tunnel junctions

TL;DR

This paper develops and characterizes a magnetic tunnel junction-based true random number generator, quantifies its raw output entropy, and applies post-processing to produce provably-secure random bits, advancing the security and reliability of MTJ-based TRNGs.

Contribution

It is the first work to quantify entropy and perform randomness extraction for MTJ-based TRNGs, ensuring provably-secure output.

Findings

Raw output entropy is effectively quantified.

Post-processing yields provably-secure random bits.

MTJ-based TRNGs are viable for secure applications.

Abstract

In recent years, true random number generators (TRNGs) based on magnetic tunnelling junction (MTJ) have become increasingly attractive. This is because MTJ-based TRNGs offer some advantages over traditional CMOS-based TRNGs, such as smaller area and simpler structure. However, there has been no work thus far that quantified the quality of the raw output of an MTJ-based TRNG and performed suitable randomness extraction to produce provably-secure random bits, unlike their CMOS-based counterparts. In this work, we implement an MTJ-based TRNG and characterise the entropy of the raw output. Using this information, we perform post-processing to extract a set of random bits which are provably-secure.