[vhdl-200x-ft] Re: [vhdl-200x] IP Protection and Encryption Donation

Hi Ajayharsh,

Ajayharsh Varikat writes:
> There is another issue we have in specifying exactly what may be
> revealed and what must not. There is no way of restricting where
> begin and end pragmas can be placed in the code, and this could
> lead to some confusion about what exactly gets protected. One way
> out is to change the pragmas to language keywords and specify exactly
> where they can occur.

Especially when it comes to adding something to a language standard, I
have strong objections against "special comments". IMHO, a comment
should not affect the way program code is interpreted by a tool. I've
been bitten before by putting the word "synopsys" into a comment. An
automatic line break put it a the the beginning of a subsequent
comment line...

Do you see any way to use VHDL attributes for that purpose? This would
also answer the question which parts of code can be encrypted or not.

As far as visibility is concerned, I could imagine that only the
external interface of the respective part of the code will be
visible. For concurrent statements that would be all incoming and
outgoing signals.

> The down side is that encrypting tools will have to be able to
> parse the language correctly.

I don't see that as a major showstopper. Tool vendors would integrate
the encryption into their compilers (isn't that already the case for
Verilog encryption?). If I intend to ship code encrypted with a
certain vendor's key, chances are that I have the according toolset
anyway.

Best regards,
Marcus

-- 
Marcus Harnisch               | Mint Technology, a division of LSI Logic
marcus_harnisch@mint-tech.com | 200 West Street, Waltham, MA 02431
Tel: +1-781-768-0772          | http://www.lsilogic.com