An Open IP Encryption Flow is Essential to the Future of the Semiconductor Industry

Editor's Note: Andrew Dauman, Vice President of Worldwide Engineering at Synplicity, Inc. is guest writing this article for Ken McElvain.

A considerable amount of third-party IP is used in today’s large, complex designs. This IP is used for general-purpose processor cores, DSP cores, memory controllers, communications functions, etc., and often takes up a considerable portion of an overall design. This can cause design flow problems when, as is often the case, the IP comes from several different vendors and has to flow through several different EDA tools.

Not surprisingly IP vendors wish to guard their secrets. Traditionally, they have done this by encrypting the source with a proprietary encryption scheme, which meant encoding it so that it is unintelligible to those who do not hold the “key”. Many IP Vendors created their own proprietary encryption schemes, but these efforts have required that the IP provider persuade the various EDA vendors to use it. Similarly, when the EDA vendors pursued their own proprietary approaches, they have had to persuade the IP vendors, other EDA vendors, and the silicon/FPGA vendors to adopt it. This all has resulted in a confusing mix of diverse and incompatible schemes, which obstruct the interoperability between different applications in the design and the implementation flow.

The only answer that achieves the goal of protecting IP while allowing it to flow through several different EDA tools, and be invisible to the end-user, is to create a standard for encryption and decryption that facilitates industry-wide interoperability. For this reason, Synplicity has created an open IP encryption initiative that supports the use of protected IP throughout the design flow: from IP vendor to EDA vendor to silicon vendor. The encryption methodology employs freely available encryption algorithms and uses a combination of symmetric and asymmetric encryption similar to the popular open source PGP scheme. This “hybrid” (symmetric/asymmetric encryption/decryption) approach means that IP vendors only need to create one version of encrypted data which they then give to all interested parties. This method guarantees consistency by ensuring that all downstream tools will use the same IP.

The advantages of this methodology are that it is open, it leverages existing technologies, it fully addresses the needs of modern electronic design environments, it facilitates industry-wide interoperability, it is applicable to both ASIC and FPGA design flows, and it is easy for IP, EDA, and silicon/FPGA vendors to adopt. And, best of all it is transparent to the end-user

If you’d like more information on this Open IP Encryption Methodology, visit our website at http://www.synplicity.com/ip_encryption/syn_web.html to download a whitepaper on the topic, or come to the panel we are hosting at DAC 2006 on Tuesday, July 25 at 7:30am in Room 302 of the Moscone Center.