Valamehr, Jonathan; Huffmire, Ted; Irvine, Cynthia; Kastner, Ryan; Koç, Çetin Kaya; Levin, Timothy; Sherwood, Timothy A qualitative security analysis of a new class of 3-D integrated crypto co-processors. (English) Zbl 1300.94098 Naccache, David (ed.), Cryptography and security: From theory to applications. Essays dedicated to Jean-Jacques Quisquater on the occasion of his 65th birthday. Berlin: Springer (ISBN 978-3-642-28367-3/pbk). Lecture Notes in Computer Science 6805, 364-382 (2012). Summary: 3-D integration presents many new opportunities for architects and embedded systems designers. However, 3-D integration has not yet been explored by the cryptographic hardware community. Traditionally, crypto co-processors have been implemented as a separate die or by utilizing one or more cores in a chip multiprocessor. These methods have their drawbacks and limitations in terms of tamper-resistance, side-channel immunity and performance. In this work we propose a new class of co-processors that are “snapped-on” to the main processor using 3-D integration, and we investigate their security ramifications. These 3-D co-processors hold many advantages over previous implementations. This paper begins with an overview of 3-D integration and its prior applications. We then outline security threat models relevant to crypto co-processors and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using a dedicated 3-D crypto co-processor compared to traditional, commodity, off-chip crypto co-processors. We also discuss the performance improvements that can be gained from using a 3-D approach.For the entire collection see [Zbl 1233.94004]. MSC: 94A60 Cryptography 68P25 Data encryption (aspects in computer science) PDFBibTeX XMLCite \textit{J. Valamehr} et al., Lect. Notes Comput. Sci. 6805, 364--382 (2012; Zbl 1300.94098) Full Text: DOI