SoC: A Real Platform for IP Reuse, IP Infringement, and IP Protection

[摘要] Increased design complexity, shrinking design cycle, andlow cost—this three-dimensional demand mandates adventof system-on-chip (SoC) methodology in semiconductor industry. The key concept of SoC is reuse of the intellectualproperty (IP) cores. Reuse of IPs on SoC increases the riskof misappropriation of IPs due to introduction of severalnew attacks and involvement of various parties as adversaries. Existing literature has huge number of proposalsfor IP protection (IPP) techniques to be incorporated in theIP design flow as well as in the SoC design methodology. However, these are quite scattered, limited in possibilities inmultithreat environment, and sometimes mutually conflicting. Existing works need critical survey, proper categorization,and summarization to focus on the inherent tradeoff,existing security holes, and new research directions. Thispaper discusses the IP-based SoC design flow to highlightthe exact locations and the nature of infringements in theflow, identifies the adversaries, categorizes these infringements,and applies strategic analysis on the effectiveness ofthe existing IPP techniques for these categories of infringements. It also clearly highlights recent challenges and newopportunities in this emerging field of research.

[学科分类] 电子、光学、磁材料