Logical Design of Discrete Automata

Protecting intellectual property in FPGA Xilinx design

D. I. Cheremisinov

United Institute of Informatics Problems of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Minsk, Belarus

Abstract: The problem of intellectual property protection in design process of FPGA Xilinx is considered. Soft- and hardware destined to control license agreements are discussed, because such an agreement for Xilinx FPGA CAD forbids the use of this tool for a reverse engineering. It is shown, that there are classes of FPGA devices whose configuration files are not decompilable. In particular, such a class consists of devices with partial dynamic reconfiguration by means of an internal reconfiguration controller.

Keywords: reverse engineering, FPGA, intellectual property protection.

UDC: 621.374.3+004.4+004.9