IP Protection

Jan 25, 2007 1 Replies

Hi all,



I want to know whether xilinx provides any features to encrypt the netlist files(.ngc or .ngd) before delivering.And also what is the chance of reverse engineering the netlist files( for example from .ngc to .vhd.)


I know that xilinx provides features to encrypt bitstream files(using AES with 256 bit key) but i want to know are there any features to encrypt netlist files?.


Thanks, Nagaraj



Converte from a ngc to a vhd is easy ... but that will be a vhd that just instanciates primitives. If you want to find out how the ip works, then there is more work to do, most of it manually. If the IP is huge, that can take a while. But the attacker still have the full name of your signals and instances and hierarchy (more or less) so that's of big help.

You can also "mangle" the netlist to obfuscate it, but that has a cost : the packer might do it's job a little less correctly without all the full paths ... (so about +5% slices ...)

yes, ngcbuild -insert_secure_netlist prohibit non_secure.ngc secure.ngc

And that will slow down a good attacker for a good ... 10 min give or take.

Sylvain

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