About: Hardware watermarking

Hardware watermarking, also known as IP core watermarking is the process of embedding covert marks as design attributes inside a hardware or IP core design itself. Hardware Watermarking can represent watermarking of either DSP Cores (widely used in consumer electronics devices) or combinational/sequential circuits. Both forms of Hardware Watermarking are very popular. In DSP Core Watermarking a secret mark is embedded within the logic elements of the DSP Core itself. DSP Core Watermark usually implants this secret mark in the form of a robust signature either in the RTL design or during High Level Synthesis (HLS) design. The watermarking process of a DSP Core leverages on the High Level Synthesis framework and implants a secret mark in one (or more) of the high level synthesis phases such