Introduction to A Phase Change Memory as a Secure Main Memory Seminar Topic:
This paper discussed about Phase Change Memory technology and describes how to design a PCM-based main memory to overwrite attacks. The benefits of PCM over existing DRAM technology is that its static energy consumption, and integration scalability for future technologies generations.
Overview:
Limited endurance is one of the issues for the design of PCM-based main memory systems. PCM components create a main memory through a very simple program of overwriting the same memory cells again and again. In a secure PCM-based main memory, PA-to-PCMA translation is continuously altered through a random process.
Applications:
The following are few of the applications of PCM:
- In embedded systems: In embedded systems, memory is used for code storage. Phase change memory enables new memory usage models which are used as storage memory for an embedded file system.
- In wireless systems: PCM serves as an outstanding code execution memory and outstanding read-mostly memory. PCM achieves the best overall cost while meeting the increasing performance demands of high-end, multimedia wireless devices
- In solid state devices: PCM can be used in solid state storage systems to store often accessed pages. And also to store those elements which are more easily managed when manipulated in place.
- As non-volatile memory: To reduce power consumption, PCM banks are turned off when they are in idle state. PCM subsystem density envelope is not limited by the system power envelope constraints.
Conclusions:
The PCM based main memory is more effective because of its very low static energy consumption. To consider PCM memory as an industrial product it should resists to software overwrite attacks. Overwrite attacks can be prevented by hiding the PCM memory address and then moving the physical memory block in PCM memory. PA-to-PCMA scheme allows the overall PCM main memory to resist to an overwrite attack for a very high fraction of its expected lifetime. A scheme proposed in this paper reduces performance on memory intensive applications.
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