Hardware IP Watermarking and Fingerprinting

The continuously increasing gap between silicon and designer productivity has created a need for common design reuse. The initial response to this need emphasized the enforcement of designers’ rights through the creation of design such that ownership can be proved with ultra high probability. Our primary objective is to provide sound treatment of the foundations of hardware watermarking and fingerprinting, as well as key research contributions to the field. At the same time, we aim not just to survey and explain key ideas, concepts, and tools but also to identify dominating trends and briefly outline emerging hardware IP protection and, in particular, hardware watermarking and fingerprinting issues including the creation and validation of trusted hardware IP and semantic IP rights protection. Finally, we also elaborate on changing focus from techniques for embedding watermarks and fingerprints to approaches for watermark and fingerprint extraction and on remote digital rights enforcement of hardware IP rights.