P1735: Encryption and management of Electronic IP

[spman]

Hi,

How does P1735 work? Can anyone please explain the mechanism of P1735? or any other solution for IP protection...

Thanks in advance.

 

[dave_59]

Prior to P1735, each tool of every vendor had their own IP protection mechanism. That means you need to to have the target tool encrypt your IP to run on that tool.

P1735 uses asymmetric key cryptography to "lock" your IP with a public key, and the target tools use a private key to "unlock" your IP. The standard also has different levels of access rights to control what tools are able to do with the IP (i.e. simulate, but not synthesize)

P1735 is still in development and hopes to be fully approved by the IEEE next year. Some tools, like Modesim/Questa already support early versions of this standard. See http://www.eda.org/twiki/bin/view.cgi/P1735/WebHome

 

[spman]

Thanks Dave

Do we can limit only one person to use the IP using P1735? Or this mechanism is only for preventing people from reading the RTL?
If limitation to one person is possible, how does P1735 guarantee this? Should the designer of IP get the public key from the client?

 

[dave_59]

P1735 provides both use models with or without a licensing mechanism. You can control who or how many people have access to your IP with a licensing mechanism. I don't think many vendors have implemented this yet. Without a licensing mechanism, you give your IP to the end user and make them agree not to share it.

 

[spman]

Does Xilinx support p1735? In this page, IEEE p1735 is mentioned. But I couldn't find any user guide about it in xilinx documents.

If I want to use p1735, should I refer to the vendor documents? I couldn't find any practical information in p1735 homepage.