<title>Distributed web-based simulation for protecting intellectual property</title>

Abstract

Concerns for preserving Intellectual Property (IP) make licensing and accessing detailed design data for virtual prototyping difficult. In general, vendors are unlikely to provide detailed specifications of product data unless their (legitimate) concerns regarding the protection of the product data from abuse and unintended distributions are adequately satisfied. Addressing these concerns can lead to complex, protracted negotiations that require detailed, project specific, licensing agreements. Within the electronics industry, numerous companies are developing and selling IP (electronic subassemblies, e.g., JPEG circuits, memory chips/cells), but are doing so in a completely off-line manner. A more ideal solution would have the IP provider distribute their product data on the web for testing with virtual prototypes and eventual integration into marketable systems. This paper describes our work to develop the technology necessary for vendors to safely distribute and protect their IP on the web. The basic strategy is to provide non-proprietary interface definitions on the web and to retain detailed product performance data behind protected firewalls. The public interface definitions enable interconnection with other regions of a virtual prototype and distributed analysis capabilities allow an evaluation of the fully operational virtual prototype. Thus distributed simulation across the web becomes feasible, and concerns about the security of proprietary data are addressed. IP is protected behind a firewall and distributed simulation is performed with the IP data wholly contained behind the firewall-only simulation interface data denoting changes to interface data values is exchanged over a potentially public network.