Cryptographic rights management of FPGA intellectual property cores

As the capacity of FPGA's increases to millions of equivalent gates the use of Intellectual Property (IP) cores becomes increasingly important to control design complexity. FPGA's are becoming platforms for integrating a system solution from components supplied by independent vendors in the same way as printed circuit boards provided a platform for earlier generations of designers. However, the current commercial model for IP cores involves large up-front license fees reminiscent of ASIC NRE charges. In order to match the IP core business model to the low to medium volume applications addressed by FPGA customers it is important to develop cryptographic techniques which allow IP core vendors to sell their product on a pay-per-use basis rather than through up-front license fees.