Effective Iterative Techniques for Fingerprinting Design IP
Effective Iterative Techniques for Fingerprinting Design IP
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Date
2004-01
Authors
Caldwell, Andrew E.
Choi, Hyun-Jin
Kahng, Andrew B.
Mantik, Stefanus
Potkonjak, Miodrag
Qu, Gang
Wong, Jennifer L.
Advisor
Citation
A.E. Caldwell, H. Choi, A.B. Kahng, S. Mantik, M. Potkonjak, G. Qu, and J.L. Wong.
DRUM DOI
Abstract
Fingerprinting is an approach that assigns a unique
and invisible ID to each sold instance of the intellectual property
(IP). One of the key advantages fingerprinting-based intellectual
property protection (IPP) has over watermarking-based IPP is the
enabling of tracing stolen hardware or software. Fingerprinting
schemes have been widely and effectively used to achieve this goal;
however, their application domain has been restricted only to static
artifacts, such as image and audio, where distinct copies can be
obtained easily. In this paper, we propose the first generic fingerprinting
technique that can be applied to an arbitrary synthesis
(optimization or decision) or compilation problem and, therefore
to hardware and software IPs.
The key problem with design IP fingerprinting is that there is a
need to generate a large number of structurally unique but functionally
and timing identical designs. To reduce the cost of generating
such distinct copies, we apply iterative optimization in an incremental
fashion to solve a fingerprinted instance. Therefore, we
leverage on the optimization effort already spent in obtaining previous
solutions, yet we generate a uniquely fingerprinted new solution.
This generic approach is the basis for developing specific fingerprinting
techniques for four important problems in VLSI CAD:
partitioning, graph coloring, satisfiability, and standard-cell placement.
We demonstrate the effectiveness of the new fingerprinting-based
IPP techniques on a number of standard benchmarks.