IP core protection and detective control of data-intensive hardware IPs against piracy

Abstract

Hardware IP core-based design paradigm has become popular for its usage in several consumer electronics and computing systems. This is because the usage of hardware IP cores enables higher performance and efficacy by accelerating the underlying process of the respective application. Further, due to their data-intensive nature and factors such as time to market pressure, process turnaround time and design complexity are some of the major reasons that have enforced or encouraged reusable IP core-based system-on-chip (SoC) designs. This scenario leads to the involvement of third-party IP vendors to match the demand and supply ratio or to accelerate the design process, thereby making it susceptible to different hardware security threats. An adversary in the untrusted offshore design house may pirate the IP core(s) for their own benefit or to satisfy malicious intentions, causing security and integrity hazards to the end consumer.