Abstract:

Memory-programmed FPGAs are loaded on power-up from an external non-volatile memory. An attacker can intercept the bitstream at that point, modify it, reverse-engineer it or make unauthorized copies of it. Since the introduction of Virtex-II, Xilinx has offered the option to encrypt bitstreams to ensure data privacy. This presentation describes the design decisions, features and restrictions of the Virtex-II bitstream security.

Biography:

Steve Trimberger received his PhD from Caltech at the dawn of the VLSI era, working with Carver Mead and Ivan Sutherland at Caltech, and Lynn Conway and Doug Fairbairn at Xerox PARC. Dr. Trimberger was a member of the original Design Technology group at VLSI Technology and joined Xilinx in 1988.

At Xilinx, Dr. Trimberger was a member of the architecture definition group for the Xilinx XC4000 FPGA and the technical leader for the XC4000 design automation software. He led the architecture definition group for the Xilinx XC4000X device families. He managed the Xilinx Advanced Development group for many years and is currently Distinguished Engineer in Xilinx Research Labs in San Jose where he leads the Circuits and Architectures Group. His research interests include low-power FPGAs, novel uses of reconfiguration, and cryptography.

Dr. Trimberger has written three books and dozens of papers on design automation and FPGA architectures. He is an inventor on more than one hundred patents in the fields of integrated circuit design, FPGA and ASIC architecture, CAE and cryptography. He has served as Design Methods Chair for the Design Automation Conference, Program Chair and General Chair for the ACM/SIGDA FPGA Symposium and on the technical programs of numerous Workshops and Symposia.