CHIP-CORE PROTECTION: everybody's business

Anyone involved with core-based chip design - core vendors, chip designers, and chip fabricators - should be concerned about protecting chip cores from unauthorized use. Although still in their early stages, the tools and techniques for conveying core-design data and tracking core usage are developing rapidly. Protecting chip cores is a complex problem due to the multiple abstraction levels in which someone may use or transmit a core, such as RTL, gate-level, or physical-layout data, and the proliferation of core suppliers. By learning about available and evolving means of protecting hard and soft chip cores, you will do a better job of designing reusable blocks and transmitting these blocks to other people both inside and outside your company.