Fingerprinting techniques for field-programmable gate array intellectual property protection

Abstract

As current computer-aided design (CAD) tool and very large scale integration technology capabilities create a new market of reusable digital designs, the economic viability of this new core-based design paradigm is pending on the development of techniques for intellectual property protection. This work presents the first technique that leverages the unique characteristics of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) to protect commercial investment in intellectual property through fingerprinting. A hidden encrypted mark is embedded into the physical layout of a digital circuit when it is placed and routed onto the FPGA. This mark uniquely identifies both the circuit origin and original circuit recipient, yet is difficult to detect and/or remove, even via recipient collusion. While this approach imposes additional constraints on the backend CAD tools for circuit place and route, experiments indicate that the performance and area impacts are minimal.