Early feedback on side-channel risks with accelerated toggle-counting

Early detection of side channel leakage in the design of a digital crypto circuit is as important as getting the design functionally correct. Currently, side channel leakage is confirmed by measuring actual prototypes, or by detailed SPICE level simulations of the hardware model. However, this feedback does not help the designer: it comes either too late (after the implementation), or else it has unreasonable simulation time requirements. In this paper, we present a design method to provide early feedback on side channel leakage based on toggle counting. We show how to abstract the low level circuit effects, such as glitches and routing imbalances, into high level simulation models that can be toggle counted. Furthermore, we propose an acceleration method for fast toggle counting using reconfigurable hardware. The proposed methods accelerate the evaluation of side channel leakage by a factor of 10⁵ over comparable SPICE level simulations.