A Fingerprinting Method Based on Module Extraction Used to Protect Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property （IP） reuse methodology has been widely used in Integrate Circuit （IC） design. Meanwhile, the corresponding security problems caused by illegal IP distribution have aroused lots of attentions. Unlike using IP watermark to identify IP＇s ownership, IP fingerprinting can be used to trace illegal distributor. In this paper, IP buyer＇s fingerprint is mapped into different derived instances of extracted modules, and then is embedded into IP to identify distributor in case of illegal distribution. Comparing with other fingerprinting method, the proposed method has some good characteristics such as low design effort, small storage demand, high security and few physical overheads.