Periodic licensing of FPGA based intellectual property

Abstract

This work describes a method of licensing IP on FPGAs based on techniques derived from software licensing schemes. Current software and hardware licensing techniques are described in detail, including a survey of current research in the fields of FPGA security, secure memory technologies, and cryptography. A licensing architecture for FPGA IP is proposed, and an implementation on a Xilinx Vertex 2 FPGA demonstrates that expiration of FPGA based IP can be achieved. Future work includes the development of a hardware architecture for consumer products that supports licensable IP cores as well as their delivery