Fueled by a wave of technological innovation, China will enter a new era of digital economy in the next five years. Thanks to strong government policy support, the Internet of Things (IoT) has become one of the mainstream trends driving the development of the digital economy. Currently, China is accelerating the deployment and widespread use of IoT to better support the application and implementation of smart home, smart industry, and smart city solutions, thereby promoting the digital transformation and upgrading of the economy and society.
With the ongoing economic transformation driven by technological advancements, China's IoT market is poised for exponential growth. However, we observe that while the interconnectivity of IoT devices brings immense value to consumers and businesses, this very interconnectivity also makes them highly vulnerable to malicious attacks.
With the continued surge in the number of connected devices, IoT security has become an industry consensus. Reliable security is crucial for the IoT market to realize its enormous potential, and it is essential for protecting sensitive data and building trust between businesses and customers.
We believe that protecting the valuable data collected and transmitted by IoT devices requires a multi-layered approach, relying on the principle of security from the design stage. One of the most effective methods is to embed a hardware-based root of trust in IoT devices. This root of trust can perform encryption functions for sensitive operations, thereby protecting IoT devices from cyberattacks.
A hardware root of trust is the foundation upon which all security-related operations within a computing system rely. It contains encryption keys, enables secure booting, and must be inherently trusted; therefore, its security must be guaranteed during design. The hardware root of trust is the most secure type of root of trust, possessing extremely strong resistance to network attacks.
The root of trust can provide a complete set of security services for the main processor, including secure boot, secure firmware updates, secure asset updates, authentication, trusted authentication, and hardware acceleration of symmetric and asymmetric encryption algorithms.
Rambus Hardware Trust Root Security IPs (RT-121 and RT-131) are tailored for the Chinese IoT market, featuring built-in national cryptographic algorithms and state-of-the-art anti-tampering protection measures to safeguard the security of IoT devices.
Rambus RT-121 and RT-131 roots of trust are the smallest security IPs, providing security services and key management capabilities. Designed for integration into power- and space-constrained devices, they protect the most sensitive assets on the chip, laying the foundation for platform security.
These hardware root trust kernels employ a state machine architecture with dedicated secure memory and offer a variety of cryptographic accelerators, including Rambus SM2, SM3, and SM4 accelerators supporting Chinese national cryptographic standards, as well as internationally commercially available AES, SHA-2, RSA, and ECC accelerators. They are well-suited for IoT and edge applications with high power consumption and space requirements, and can provide the best balance of power consumption, area, cost, and performance for the Chinese IoT market.
