• DocumentCode
    1052470
  • Title

    DRAM as source of randomness

  • Author

    Pyo, C. ; Pae, Sung-il ; Lee, Gene

  • Author_Institution
    Dept. of Comput. Eng., Hongik Univ., Seoul
  • Volume
    45
  • Issue
    1
  • fYear
    2009
  • Firstpage
    26
  • Lastpage
    27
  • Abstract
    Proposed is a true random number generator (TRNG) based on collision between DRAM accesses and refresh operations. The generator repeatedly executes a short code and reads a part of time counter register after each execution without an explicit post-processing. The simplicity allows the generation of true random numbers with a reasonable efficiency on commodity desktop computers without special devices and opens the possibility for simple TRNG on devices that use DRAM. Although very simple, the quality of the bit sequence is surprisingly good, as demonstrated by test results using NIST test suite.
  • Keywords
    DRAM chips; random number generation; DRAM access time; DRAM chips; NIST test suite; desktop computers; refresh operation; time counter register; true random number generator;
  • fLanguage
    English
  • Journal_Title
    Electronics Letters
  • Publisher
    iet
  • ISSN
    0013-5194
  • Type

    jour

  • DOI
    10.1049/el:20091899
  • Filename
    4733087