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FPGA secures systems against a variety of threats

FPGA secures systems against a variety of threats

New Products |
By Rich Pell



Unsecured systems can lead to data and design theft, product cloning and overbuilding, and device tampering or hijacking, reminded us Gordon Hands, Director of Marketing at Lattice Semiconductor with a few slides about recent notorious hacks. Designed to be the “first-on/last-off” component on circuit boards, the MachXO3D can protect, detect and recover itself and other components from unauthorized firmware access at every stage of a system’s lifecycle, from the point of manufacturing all the way to the system’s end of life.

By integrating security and system control functions such as a hardened configuration engine that only boots from authenticated bit-streams and a secure dual configuration that improves update reliability (with storing the last good a golden image), the chip becomes the first link in chain of trust that protects entire systems.

Lattice has also enhanced the configuration and programming steps in the manufacturing process so the new FPGA can protect systems by securing communication between the MachXO3D and legitimate firmware providers throughout the component’s entire lifecycle, including system manufacture, transit, installation, operation and decommissioning.

The chip is pin compatible with the MachXO3 which is already used to develop the majority of control PLDs for critical infrastructure, making the upgrade easy. Compliant with NIST SP 800 193 Platform Firmware Resiliency (PFR) Guidelines, the device includes a control function FPGA with 4K and 9K look-up tables for implementing logic that instantly configures at power up from on device flash memory, up to 2700 Kbits of user Flash memory and up to 430 Kbits sysMEM embedded block RAM to provide more flexible design options.

The chip can have up to 383 IOs, configurable to support LVCMOS 3.3 to 1.0, and designed to integrate into a wide variety of system environments. An embedded security block provides pre-verified hardware support for cryptographic functions such as ECC, AES, SHA, PKC and Unique Secure ID. Samples are available now.

Lattice Semiconductor – www.latticesemi.com

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