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Handbook of FPGA Design Security pp 1–25Cite as

Introduction and Motivation

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Abstract

From Bluetooth transceivers to the NASA Mars Rover, FPGAs have become one of the mainstays of embedded system design. By merging properties of hardware and software, reconfigurable devices provide an attractive tradeoff between the performance of application-specific hardware and the programmability of CPUs. Although this flexibility allows developers to quickly prototype and deploy embedded systems with performance close to ASICs, this programmability can also be exploited to disrupt critical functionality, eavesdrop on encrypted communication, or even destroy a chip. Creating systems which are both efficient and flexible, yet fundamentally sound from a security point of view, is an exceedingly challenging endeavor for both researchers and practitioners. All too often the security aspects of a reconfigurable design are not addressed until far too late in the design process, resulting in systems that are protected only by their obscurity. This chapter presents an overview of Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technologies from the viewpoint of security, specifically how and why these devices have grown in importance over the last decade to become one of the most trusted and critical elements of modern computer systems. This chapter also discusses their changing role from a platform for prototyping to a deployable solution, the architecture of a modern FPGA, the security ramifications of their increased use, and some of the lessons from the security community that may be applicable in this domain.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A transistor in which an input is not only applied to the gate but also to the drain. This technology reduces the number of transistors required to implement certain kinds of logic.

  2. 2.

    Companies protect their intellectual property fiercely due to the high cost of designing hardware modules. Later chapters discuss several schemes to prevent the theft of IP cores from FPGAs.

  3. 3.

    A list of logical gates and their interconnections.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Naval Postgraduate School, Cunningham Road 1411, 93943, Monterey, CA, USA

    Dr. Ted Huffmire, Dr. Cynthia Irvine, Thuy D. Nguyen & Timothy Levin

  2. Dept. of Computer Science and Eng., University of California, San Diego, Gilman Drive 9500, 92093, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Dr. Ryan Kastner

  3. Department of Computer Science, UC, Santa Barbara, 93106, Santa Barbara, USA

    Dr. Timothy Sherwood

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  1. Dr. Ted Huffmire
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  2. Dr. Cynthia Irvine
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  3. Thuy D. Nguyen
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Correspondence to Ted Huffmire .

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Huffmire, T., Irvine, C., Nguyen, T.D., Levin, T., Kastner, R., Sherwood, T. (2010). Introduction and Motivation. In: Handbook of FPGA Design Security. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9157-4_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9157-4_1

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