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Hsinchu, Taiwan (May 21, 2020) –eMemory, the world’s leading supplier of intellectual property for NVM and security at the semiconductor level, is providing its intellectual property that ensures security in new chips for the narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) market.

NB-IoT is a low-power wide area network (LPWAN) radio technology standard developed to connect a wide range of cellular devices and services for utilities, smart cities, agriculture, and manufacturing applications. The advantages of the technology are low cost, long battery life and high connection density.

Electronic device makers are aiming to capture rapid growth of the NB-IoT market, which is just starting to take off. Currently, 141 telecom operators in 69 countries have invested in NB-IoT networks. Of those, 90 operators have already deployed their networks. In the future, global telecom giants are expected to drive demand for NB-IoT chipsets for at least another decade.

“We are pleased to see our intellectual property adopted in these new IoT chipsets,” said Michael Ho, Vice President of Business Development at eMemory. “By providing security at the most fundamental level, these products will be safe from hacking or loss of key information thanks to our unique technology.”

eMemory customers expect to launch the new NB-IoT chipsets in the near future. While the IoT business is growing rapidly, the billions of devices connected on the internet are vulnerable to hacking unless they include security safeguards such as those provided by eMemory.

eMemory is providing two key intellectual properties (IPs) in the new NB-IoT chipsets. First is the company’s one-time programmable (OTP) portion for secure storage of data. Second is the physically unclonable function (PUF) security solution that acts as a unique silicon “fingerprint” in each chip. The NB-IoT chipsets will include functional blocks such as MCUs, eSIM, baseband, flash memory, RAM and power amplifiers while providing a 50% reduction in power consumption compared with existing devices.

Since all IoT devices are a potential entry point for cyberattacks, security is essential in the design of IoT modules from the very beginning. eMemory’s NeoPUF and NeoFuse IPs enable chipset and device manufacturers to incorporate robust levels of security for the next wave of NB-IoT devices.

eMemory’s NeoPUF IP is a hardware security technology that creates unique silicon fingerprints for chips by harnessing the random nanoscale variations created during the semiconductor fabrication process. These fingerprints can be used to create unclonable chip-specific IDs and cryptographic keys for the IoT security applications of identification, authentication, anti-counterfeiting and data protection.

All secret cryptographic keys that are stored in eSIM, OTP, e-flash or external memory can be encrypted and protected safely by NeoPUF. These functions can be used in NB-IoT devices and in all IoT devices for hardware root of trust.

eMemory’s NeoFuse is an antifuse-based OTP memory that provides secure key or code storage while operating at very low power, which is essential for IoT devices. NeoFuse can securely store boot codes, which is useful in the execution of cryptographic checks at each stage of the boot process, and in preventing the operation of unauthorized or malicious firmware. NeoFuse can also store trimming values to help sensors in IoT devices operate at peak performance.

NeoPUF and NeoFuse are flexible building blocks for chipset designers or manufacturers to develop tailored security solutions for their low power IoT modules and applications. They can be customized to provide the most stringent degree of protection or to comply with standard privacy and security policies.

eMemory’s portfolio of reliable IP solutions enables our partners to reduce integration risk during product development, accelerate time-to-market and, ultimately, capture the growth of the IoT business.