Null convention logic applications of asynchronous design in nanotechnology and cryptographic security

This dissertation presents two Null Convention Logic (NCL) applications of asynchronous logic circuit design in nanotechnology and cryptographic security. The first application is the Asynchronous Nanowire Reconfigurable Crossbar Architecture (ANRCA); the second one is an asynchronous S-Box design for cryptographic system against Side-Channel Attacks (SCA).;The following are the contributions of the first application:;1) Proposed a diode- and resistor- based ANRCA (DR-ANRCA). Three configurable logic block (CLB) structures were designed to efficiently reconfigure a given DR-PGMB as one of the 27 arbitrary NCL threshold gates. A hierarchical architecture was also proposed to implement the higher level logic that requires a large number of DR-PGMBs, such as multiple-bit NCL registers.;2) Proposed a memristor look-up-table based ANRCA (MLUT-ANRCA). An equivalent circuit simulation model has been presented in VHDL and simulated in Quartus II. Meanwhile, the comparison between these two ANRCAs have been analyzed numerically.;3) Presented the defect-tolerance and repair strategies for both DR-ANRCA and MLUT-ANRCA.;The following are the contributions of the second application:;1) Designed an NCL based S-Box for Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Functional verification has been done using Modelsim and Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA).;2) Implemented two different power analysis attacks on both NCL S-Box and conventional synchronous S-Box.;3) Developed a novel approach based on stochastic logics to enhance the resistance against DPA and CPA attacks. The functionality of the proposed design has been verified using an 8-bit AES S-box design. The effects of decision weight, bitstream length, and input repetition times on error rates have been also studied. Experimental results shows that the proposed approach enhances the resistance to against the CPA attack by successfully protecting the hidden key.