NVIDIA Corporation
Protecting circuits from hacking using a digital reset detector

Abstract:

Computing devices are now used for various purposes ranging from monitoring a refrigerator to driving automobiles. Protecting the data and logic within the chips of the computing devices is essential to ensure reliable operation. When a particular partition of a chip is powered-up but the logic of the partition is not reset, the logic will be in an unpredictable random state. To operate in a secure environment, it is necessary to start the operation of the logic from a known state and not a random state. To ensure the logic is operating in a secure environment, a digital reset detector circuit (DRDC) is provided that indicates if the logic was reset after power-up. The DRDC can ensure chips are secure from attacks involving reset deprivation upon power-up and help protect various secure and secret assets in a chip, including customer keys.