Presentation
S2CIM: A Secure-Computation and Secure-Storage Compute-in-Memory Architecture with Circuit-Algorithm Co-Design for Efficient and Trustworthy Edge Inference
DescriptionEdge computing that offloads AI inference from the cloud to local devices can significantly reduce interaction latency and improve data privacy, while simultaneously imposing stringent requirements on both efficiency and security. Non-volatile compute-in-memory (nvCIM) boosts efficiency by executing multiply-accumulate (MAC) inside memory arrays, reducing data movement and eliminating weight refresh. However, deploying nvCIM in untrusted environments exposes both user inputs and model weights to multiple security threats: during storage, non-volatility keeps weights vulnerable to physical extraction; during computation, plaintext inputs must be transferred and exposed at runtime. Recent in-memory encryption CIM (IME-CIM) schemes integrate an XOR cipher and in-situ decryption to protect stored weights, yet still require plaintext keys and inputs during inference and often incur up to 2x array area overhead, leaving a security-efficiency gap. This paper proposes S²CIM, a FeFET-based nvCIM architecture with circuit-algorithm co-design to bridge this gap. For security, an Affine-Transform Splitting (ATS) scheme based on randomization strategies protects both offline weights (XORed weights) and online computation (obfuscated inputs) without explicitly exposing plaintext keys or inputs. For efficiency, a Drain-Input Gate-Scan (DIGS) based on 1FeFET-1R achieves low-variation signed multi-bit MAC in minimal cycles with high area efficiency comparable to common nvCIMs. We validate its functionality using an S²CIM macro with 16x16 arrays. Compared with recent IME-CIMs, S²CIM improves area efficiency by up to 16.8x and reduces energy per MAC by up to 6.7x, while ensuring 97.4% encrypted ViT inference accuracy and reducing attack success rates to 50% under all potential threat models.
Event Type
Research Manuscript
TimeMonday, July 2710:30am - 10:43am PDT
LocationMtg Room 203AB