Secure poly fuse ROM with a power-on or on-reset hardware security features and method therefor
AssigneeKoninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.
InventorElie Georges Khoury
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A secure one-time programmable (OTP) salicided poly fuse array (2×8) cells with a power-on or on-reset hardware security feature is proposed. The secure OTP which is based on a primitive building cell that includes a salicided poly fuse and a MOS switch, utilize the same building block of the un-secure larger OTP array. This includes an enhanced multistage track & latch sense amp, or comparator, primitive memory cells, decoders for write and read mechanism, and a similar control block.
Claims14
A secure one time programmable (OTP) ROM comprising:
- secure data storage for storing a secure data value;
- an output port;
- and,
- a data retrieval circuit operable in a first mode and in a second other mode for in the first mode providing a first known value other than the value stored in the secure data storage to the output port and in the second other state for providing the value stored in the secure data storage is provided to the to the output port.
A method of performing a secure read on a one time programmable (OTP) ROM device having a secure value stored therein comprising the steps of:
- providing a secure output register;
- resetting the device;
- storing within the secure output register a known value other than the secure value;
- and,
- performing a secure read operation to retrieve the secure value and to latch the retrieved secure value into the secure output register in dependence upon the secure read operation.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.