Periodic licensing of FPGA based intellectual property

ABSTRACT

As Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) gain popularity and become more prevalent in consumer products, the desire to have expiring FPGA Intellectual Property(IP) will also rise. Up to this point, the sale of Intellectual Property (IP) targeting FPGA-based consumer products have not been tremendously profitable for the creators of this IP. The sale of the products containing this IP however have been. This is due in part to the way the IP is licensed. This research investigates the feasibility of physically enforced periodic licensing of FPGA IP. The goal is to design a hardware architecture to support licensable FPGA IP cores targeting consumer products. This work describes a method of licensing IP on FPGAs based on techniques derived from software licensing schemes. Current software and hardware licensing techniques are described in detail, including a survey of current research in the fields of FPGA security, secure memory technologies, and cryptography. A licensing architecture for FPGA IP is proposed, and an implementation on a Xilinx Virtex 2 FPGA demonstrates that expiration of FPGA based IP can be achieved. Future work includes the development of a hardware architecture for consumer products that supports licensable IP cores as well as their delivery.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  B. Hardware
  B.7 INTEGRATED CIRCUITS
      B.7.1 Types and Design Styles
          Subjects: Gate arrays

Additional Classification:
  B. Hardware
  B.m MISCELLANEOUS
      Subjects: Design management

  K. Computing Milieux
  K.5 LEGAL ASPECTS OF COMPUTING
      K.5.1 Hardware/Software Protection
          Subjects: Licensing

General Terms:
Design, Legal Aspects