Low Cost and Effective Hardware Trojan Mitigation Techniques for Approximate Systems

Abstract

In the realm of computing, AC stands as a promising frontier,offering efficiency and speed. However, it has been reported in the technical literature that most of the ex isting AC designs are prone to hardware attacks. The recent research has unveiled the implications of neglecting security in approximate systems. The techniques to secure exact systems when fabricating chips with untrustworthy components are not applica ble for approximate systems. The existing technique to mask the effect of Hardware Trojan(HT) in approximate circuits introduces significant area overhead and power con sumption. Therefore,our paper presents novel design approaches to effectively mask the impact of HT, offering a significant 30% and 55% improvement in area and power efficiency,respectively. Our techniques strike a delicate balance, masking the Trojan threat while optimizing resource utilization. The effectiveness of proposed techniques is validated through a practical case study of image processing; three IPs with different HTs are successfully masked with a PSNR and SSIM of 33dB and 0.92 respectively. Through rigorous analysis and experimentation, we demonstrate the effectiveness of these techniques in strengthening security and improving reliability without compro mising the efficiency of approximate computing systems. Our research seeks to throw light on the security challenges in approximate computing, while providing practical solutions to enhance security and reliability of these systems against potential threats while maintaining optimal performance.