Continuous Remote Control and Authentication of Integrated Circuits
- 详细技术说明
- A method for Digital Rights Management for Integrated Circuits.
- *Abstract
-
Technology
This invention is a new approach for remote enabling, disabling and metering of integrated circuits. The approach leverages inherent manufacturing variability of modern and pending Si technologies. The key conceptual novelty is that designers can control ICs remotely, continuously, and concurrently with execution.
The remote activation protocol is designed to protect both the designer and the fab by requiring a key exchange mechanism for IC activation. It can be summarized using the following pseudocode.
1) The designer sends the design files to the fab, test vectors, and the number of required copies to the fab.
2) The fab manufactures the required number of ICs, applies the test vectors and sends the IC outputs to the designer.
3) The designer uses the values sent by the fab and computes a key to operate the chip properly.
4) The fab stores the key on the chip and tests the chip in the operational mode.
Advantages
The key element of this technology is that the ICs are functionally locked. Under other hardware protection schemes, the chips are not functionally locked, and the locking modules are easily side-stepped. Also, most other methods employ public-key cryptography, which has high overhead and is not applicable to smaller designs, especially power constrained designs. In this invention, the lock is intelligently embedded within the structure, as opposed to an external lock.
Potential Applications
This technology is applicable to designers of integrated circuits that contract out the manufacturing of their designs and want to avoid hardware piracy. Specifically, this technology can be used in the following scenarios.
Use of a combination of unique functionality and RUB to remotely authenticate and disable smart cards; certification that a computation was executed on a specified IC in a distributed environment; and prevention of software piracy by the creation of techniques to produce software than can only run on a specific IC.
The Inventors
Farinaz Koushanfar is an Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Rice University.
Miodrag Potkonjak is a Professor of Computer Science at UCLA.
Availability
This technology is available for license. A utility patent has been filed with the USPTO.
Inquiries
Nila Bhakuni
713-348-6231
bhakuni@rice.edu
- 国家/地区
- 美国
