Take a look at the new version of this page: [ beta version ]. Tell us what you think.

ABSTRACT

Using FPGAs, a designer can separate the design process from the manufacturing flow. Therefore, the owner of a sensitive design need not expose the design to possible theft and tampering during its manufacture, dramatically simplifying the process of assuring trust in that design. Modern FPGAs include bitstream security features that turn the fielded design trust problem into an information security problem, with well-known cryptographic information security solutions. The generic nature of the FPGA base array allows the validation expense to be amortized over all designs targeted to that base array. Even the task of checking design tools is simplified by using non-destructive checks of the FPGA design.

REFERENCES

• 1: Jones, L., "Single Event Upset (SEU) Detection and Correction Using Virtex-4 Devices", Xilinx Application Note #714, 2007, http://www.xilinx.com/bvdocs/appnotes/xapp714.pdf
• 2: Xilinx Virtex-4 Configuration Users Guide, v1.5, UG 071 2007, http://www.xilinx.com/bvdocs/userguides/ug071.pdf
• 3: Ken Thompson, Reflections on trusting trust, Communications of the ACM, v.27 n.8, p.761-763, Aug 1984 [doi>10.1145/358198.358210]
• 4: Bennett, D., Private communication.
• 5: Wollinger, T. and Parr, C. "How Secure are FPGAs in Cryptographic Applications", 13^th International Conference on Field Programmable Logic and Applications, FPL 2003, P. Y. K. Cheung, G. A. Constantinides, J. T. de Sousa, eds., LNCS 2887, Springer, 2003.
• 6: Feng, J. and Seely, J. A., "Design Security with Waveforms", http://www.altera.com/literature/cp/cp_sdr_design_security.pdf
• 7: Lesea, A., "IP Security in FPGAs", Xilinx http://direct.xilinx.com/bvdocs/whitepapers/wp261.pdf
• 8: Teliknepalli, A., "Is Your FPGA Design Secure?", XCell Journal, 2003, http://www.xilinx.com/publications/xcellonline/xcell_47/xc_pdf/xc_secure47.pdf
• 9: Baetoniu, C. and Sheth S., "FPGA IFF Copy Protection Using Dallas Semiconductor/Maxim DS2432 Secure EEPROMs", Xilinx Application Note XAPP 780, Xilinx 2005.
• 10: Trimberger, S., FPGA Technology, Kluwer Academic Press, 1994.
• 11: Trimberger, S. "Method and apparatus for protecting proprietary configuration data for programmable logic devices", US Patent 6654889, 2003.
• 12: Schneier, B., Applied Cryptography Second Edition, Wiley, 1996.

INDEX TERMS

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

General Terms:
Design, Security

Keywords:
FPGA, cryptography, trusted design