A high speed, fully digital IC random number generator

System-on-a-chip solutions require hardware based integrated circuit random number generators for trustworthy transmission of information. This paper presents, a fully digital, high speed ASIC random number generator based on ring oscillators. Prototypes have been designed and fabricated in HHNEC's 0.25 mu m eFlash process with a supply voltage of 2.5 V. The circuit occupies 0.052 mm(2) and dissipates 0.095 W of power. IC design level experiences, measurements, analysis of measurements and statistical test results are also demonstrated. Instead of resilient function, employed in the previous ring oscillators based design, which decreases the throughput by a factor of 16, we propose to use only a simple Von Neumann corrector which improves this result by a factor of 4. We achieved fulfilled test results from NIST 800-22 test suit after Von Neumann corrector with a sampling frequency of 74 MHz. Since, Von Neumann corrector is used as a post-processor, the throughput becomes 18.5 Mbps. Furthermore, we propose to use doubled ring oscillators structure, thus, a 125 Mbps throughput, which is the highest data rate to date with fulfilled test results, is attained without any postprocessing. The results were repeatable numerous times. (C) 2011 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.