WP197 - CipherStream Protocol: How CoolRunner-II CPLDs Protect FPGA IP

It doesn’t usually take very long to create an FPGA design. Recently, however, a Xilinx competitor ran an ad declaring that while an FPGA can take up to a year to design, it can be cloned in only a second. Are FPGA designs really that insecure? While the ad seems absurdly hyperbolic, it is true that the bitstreams of some volatile FPGAs can be cloned. While it’s unlikely that cloning could happen in "a second,"