FPGA SoC hardware security features
As for any modern embedded system, connected to the internet or not, security is becoming a major design challenge, specifically in today’s emerging Internet of Things (IoT) devices and modules. FPGA-based SoCs face the same security challenges and will need to be designed to counter illegal access and tampering. Xilinx FPGA SoCs adopt the ARM TrustZone security architecture for both the Processing Subsystem (PS) and Programmable Logic (PL) parts. The ARM TrustZone architecture is a combination of hardware and software frameworks that work in tandem to make the SoC implementing them as secure as possible. In addition to the ARM TrustZone support, Xilinx SoCs add a third dimension to the security paradigm, specifically for the PL, which requires an externally hosted configuration bitstream file. The configuration bitstream can be encrypted by the Xilinx hardware design tools; the FPGA device provides the mechanism for its decryption by the...
