TRNG (True Random Number Generator) NIST SP800-90C

Brian Bailey

At the scale of the Vera Rubin platform, yield, calibration, and security failures compound across tens of thousands of devices. A single unified hardware anchor at the silicon level is not optional, it is architectural necessity. A physical unclonable function-based hardware root-of-trust, PUFrt, jointly developed by eMemory and PUFsecurity, was designed precisely for this role: a fully integrated implementation of the Caliptra 2.0 open standard that simultaneously manages cross-die memory repair and hardware root of trust across the full platform.

This article provides an in-depth analysis of the specific PPA challenges introduced by PQC and elucidates how PUF-PQC leverages its unique dualtrack strategy to deliver a robust and flexible Hardware Root of Trust (HRoT) across diverse application scenarios. Furthermore, it demonstrates the integration of Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) with a NIST SP 800-90B compliant True Random Number Generator (TRNG) to serve as critical components of PUFrt (Root of Trust), ensuring the security of post-quantum key generation starting from the entropy source.

For years, SiFive has been delivering a range of security capabilities that are optimized for deployment throughout the system, tightly coupled to products from its broad portfolio of processors. Building on the prior blogs that centered on performance and effective coupling of accelerators, I wanted to focus this blog on security and its role in the growing popularity of the SiFive Intelligence X100 product family.

A Root of Trust is the foundation on which all secure operations of a computing system depend. It contains the keys used for cryptographic functions and enables a system-wide secure boot process. It is inherently trusted and therefore must be secure by design.