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TITLE: Pay-per-use Licensing for FPGA Cores
A new technique for pay-per-use licensing has been proposed by Tom Kean
of Algotronix to lower the up-front pricing barrier that presently dominates
the FPGA reusable core marketplace. FPGA designers traditionally target
markets in which substantial up-front investments for ASIC mask and prototyping
charges are avoided. However, suppliers of reusable cores for FPGAs have
been forced to charge a one-time fee because there has been no way to determine
how many times the cores are reused. Dr. Kean advocates that FPGA manufacturers
include additional circuitry to support pay-per-use royalty collection.
The technique would also prevent bitstream piracy. Each chip would contain
an individually programmed secret key and identifier. Xilinx FPGAs already
include triple-DES encryption circuitry so little would have to be added
except for a small non-volatile on-chip memory.
For additional information, access:
Pay-per-use
Papers/Presentations
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FILENUMBER: 1128
BEGIN_KEYWORDS
Pay-per-use Licensing FPGA Cores
END_KEYWORDS
DATE: July 2003
TITLE: Pay-per-use Licensing for FPGA Cores
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