Hardware Based IP Protection

Please let me know if you're able to get anyone and how it goes, It seems like the Renesas acquisition of Dialog's lineup has been sloppy as hell

I can't charge as much for the design as I can make on the sales, nowhere near. I've made around $4 million on the current board, maybe $5 million, I don't think I've added it up. I think the sales have been around $7 million. I expect the sales on the new design to come close to that over the next decade. There's no way I can get them to pay me anything like that, for the design.

I can get them to pay for the boards if I make them. So far, they've been happy to pay what I ask, because they have so much markup on the product my boards go into.

Once they look at manufacturing costs, and see a very low number compared to the price charged, the jig is up. I'm pretty sure they won't bother looking at manufacturing costs until they have a need to. Either way, the agreement has to be strict enough, that even if they make the boards, I get my share.

This makes me think the two customized chips will need to have a significant price, enough to take the edge off what I want as a royalty, but not so high, they want to ditch them. Maybe, make one more expensive than the other. But first, I need to get Greenpak to talk to me.

You are just feeding the troll.

I thought someone here has used the Greenpak parts before. Maybe it was another group.

A a does now seem to be our leading troll. Whether he qualifies as a faker is open to doubt.

To fake something you have to pass it off as something which it isn't, and what a a posts is such bare-faced idiocy that it won't pass as anything else but idiocy.

A a may be stupid enough not to realise this, which would make him a faker-manque.

Now, now. That's essentially what I told you do. Repeating the same message back to me in a simplified form is a remarkably stupid response.

Snipping what I'd posted is even more obviously stupid. You are definitely even dumber than Gnatguy. As Feynman said, there's always room at the bottom.

Nah it was me (though there another guy here who's used them also, "BoB" I believe.)

I've done a number of designs with them in the past couple years so if you have any questions I might be able to help.

BTW I noticed you talked about level shifting, a number of GreenPak parts have dual supply pins and can intrinsically level shift between

I'm a bit unclear about the programming. When they have an I2C port, does that mean they can be programmed via that? I'm looking at the SLG47004 and SLG46580. Can the SLG46580 LDOs be set to power up to a given voltage? I don't see a means of sequencing the power up of the LDO, other than perhaps through the I2C port. They talk about writing to registers that reflect the non-volatile memory. It's not clear if there are registers that are not loaded from the NVM.

Do all of their parts have factory programmed NVM? Do their parts let you configure everything from the I2C port, or do the parts need to be replaced when reprogrammed?

Whew! I started typing this around noon and have been slammed all afternoon!

Looks like the respin is going to be rewarding. They are talking about 18,000 units next year and more in the following two years! I just need to design it with an FPGA that I can actually buy, not to mention the other parts on the board. I hope the availability of the Greenpak units is not too bad.

I don't think the parts that are otherwise useful have the dual voltages. I just need 3.3V I/O that are 5V tolerant. I'm not finding that on the parts that otherwise look interesting.

You can set the LDOs to power up to any of the 32 steps between 0.9 and

The SLG46580 also has an 8 state ASM, you could probably use that for power sequencing if it's not otherwise needed..

There's two layers to a program, an NVM layer and a RAM register layer. What's programmed on the factory on the OTP units (a couple are NVM-MTP but I've not used them) is the NVM layer, but at power-up that data is pulled into the registers in RAM.

After that it's what's in the RAM that determines how the chip operates, so you can write those via i2c once it's running and re-configure it as you like.

See page 57 in the PDF:

There's a tool in the designer that lets you take a snapshot of two designs for a given device and it will spit out a set of difference commands you can send over i2c that will take it to the next configuration from the previous.

Yeah, both of the parts I've found so far have lots of stuff I won't use. The logic doesn't do much for me and the comparators are not of much value. If only they combined the op amps with the LDOs and threw in a 5V to 3V level shifter. :)

I kinda figured that. Is there a way to lock bits of the configuration so they can't be read or changed? I was hoping when the factory programmed it there would be some level of security. I suppose it can be a good thing to support field upgrades though.

That's interesting. It's not so much that I will be loading multiple designs, other than adjusting the rheostat in the opamp part.

I've tried emailing several contacts listed at the Renesas site, a couple at Avnet and a couple at Renesas. No responses. Have you spoken to anyone about the GreenPak devices? I'd like to spend a few minutes talking to an FAE.

I've been looking for an image of a pre-programmed part, or any Greenpak part, for that matter. Can't find one. The data sheet says the markings are pretty basic, with a "part ID", a date/lot code, assembly site and revision code. I think the part ID and revision code refer to the customer's design. It doesn't look like there's room for a logo or other information identifying the manufacturer.

Do you have a photo of a pre-programmed part, you can share?