Hi allI don't know too much about fpga's yet so bear with me if this soundstoo silly. I'm quite interested from what I heard so far and intend todig deeper into the topic.While reading diverse articles about fpga's I got the impression thatthey have to be programmed out of a prom or through a microprocessoretc. However, this means that it would be very easy to "catch" thiscode in a finished design and abuse it to clone/copy such a design.So, my question is, is my impression right, and if so what commonprotection mechanisms are available? Or are there fpga's availablethat contain flash memory for the purpose of progrmming them on chipor such? Some scheme similar to what's available with mostmicrocontrollers that contain on chip flash?TIAMarkus

Yes it is possible to clone an FPGA that gets its config from a boot prom if somebody really wanted to do so. However if you are worried about this for your design then there are device families out there that are flash or antifuse based which make this much harder if not almost impossible. Actel have a feature called 'FlashLock' in their ProASIC+ devices which I believe is designed to protect against this and their Accelerator family as well as their older families are antifuse. Also Xilinx do what are called 'Hardcopy' devices which are basically the same as the original FPGA but with hardwired logic rather than being configurable. There are many other choices from Altera, Quicklogic, etc aswell I should imagine.Cheers,Pete.

How to protect fpga based design against cloning?

Oct 29, 2003 42 Replies

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Nial Stewart 22 years ago

No problem, I've never had to use embedded batteries, it was just a general interest query.

Thanks for the info Erik, this could be useful backround for a design I've had in mind for some time.

Nial

------------------------------------------------ Nial Stewart Developments Ltd FPGA and High Speed Digital Design

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Nial Stewart 22 years ago

I haven't wanted to use any yet, hence the ignorance.

I'm sure I will, when I have :-)

Nial.

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Arnaud Dion 22 years ago

You consider there SRAM-based FPGAs (Xilnx, Altera..) which need external components to be programmed.

There are others technologies like anti-fuse or Flash-based FPGA. These FPGAs don't need any others components and so one can't read your bitstream.

Actel is a manufacturor of flash-based FPGA, if you really need security, have a look at their FPGAs.

Arnaud.

"Glen Herrmannsfeldt" a écrit dans le message de news:7cXnb.58247$Tr4.129994@attbi_s03...

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