The agreement will see the companies deliver Menta eFPGAs incorporating cryptographic IP (AES, RSA, etc) from Secure-IC. The solution looks to simplify integration and enhance the programmability of cryptographic security features in complex SoCs.
Secure-IC and Menta’s collaboration will provide customers with a flexible solution that will follow market security requirements over time. Security standards evolve over time due to new attacks methods and attacker improvements but full ASIC products are fixed and cannot keep the compliancy with these standards during all their life.
Embedded security features such as cryptographic algorithms in eFPGA offers the capability to upgrade the product throughout its life and keep the compliancy with security standards. In addition, using eCB (embedded Customer Block) of Menta eFPGA IPs offers the capability to use high performance cryptographic engines.
“Security is fast becoming a major defining feature of SoCs used in a variety of applications,” said Sylvain Guilley CTO at Secure-IC. “The major challenge is getting products to market quickly while accommodating emerging and changing standards such as the depreciation of old algorithms (RSA-2048, AES-128, etc.) and the emergence of new algorithms (post-quantum cryptography, pairing, etc.). Integrating cryptographic IP into an eFPGA solves this challenge by allowing designers to take advantage of built-in programmability throughout the life of the product.”
Menta provides standard cell eFPGA IP for SoC, ASIC or ASSP designs, targeting any production node at any foundry. Integrating security IP into Menta’s eFPGA provides several advantages over alternative approaches, which generally use an FPGA plus ASIC.
The higher integration reduces footprint, while the enhanced programmability allows customers to update silicon post-production, whether to fix a bug, implement customer-specific features, adapt to evolving standards. This combination is intended for SoCs used in IoT & Edge, Automotive, Consumer Electronics, Defence & Government, Media & Entertainment, Memory & Storage, Payments & Transactions, Trusted Computing & Cloud applications.
Secure-IC IP offers a wide range of primitives (post-quantum cryptography, lightweight cryptography, etc.), as well as support for multiple modes of operations and algorithm variability (SHA2 and SHA3 families, AES/SM4 ciphers, etc.). The platform also supports tunability in the countermeasures level of strength (against Side Channel attacks, fault injection attacks, etc.), . Customers will also benefit from the use of Menta eFPGA in the Secure-IC Securyzr, which provides a secure environment for re-programming and updates.
“Secure-IC is a world leading provider of embedded cybersecurity solutions. Their cybersecurity algorithms are the perfect complement to our eFPGA IP, allowing customers to quickly integrate the latest security features while still meeting expectations for small footprint, power consumption and performance,” said Vincent Markus, CEO of Menta.
