SoC Design

Using OpenSSL in SoC Crypto IP Design: Reference Scope, Licensing, and Validation A comprehensive guide for SoC security IP designers · April 29, 2026 Principal Engineer's Note — OpenSSL's crypto/ tree is the de-facto industry standard for functional correctness . However, mapping it directly to RTL comes at a serious cost in area, power, and side-channel resilience. This guide covers: ① the appropriate scope for using OpenSSL as a reference, ② license and patent risks, ③ a mandatory design checklist, and ④ how to obtain international standard test vectors and golden results. 1. Framing the Problem The core question has two parts: ① Can the OpenSSL crypto/ directory (C source) serve as a reference for crypto IP design inside an SoC? ② What exactly must a crypto engine IP verify, and where do you find globally accepted protocols, test vectors, and golden outputs? This is not a simple "can I copy the code?" question. It is a design decision that must ...

📡 Data Communication Protocols — From Packets and Layers to SoC NoC A Technical Primer on Protocol Fundamentals · April 29, 2026 💡 In one line — A data communication protocol is a shared set of rules that allows heterogeneous systems to exchange data. From global internet backbones to a fingernail-sized SoC, the same core principles apply throughout: fragmentation, layering, encapsulation, and routing. 1. Why Protocols Are Necessary A data communication protocol is a pre-agreed set of rules — a shared technical language — that allows disparate hardware and software to exchange data. Just as two engineers can collaborate across national boundaries when they share a common specification, computers, network devices, and semiconductor IP cores can only exchange meaningful bits when they follow identical conventions. Without protocols, a frame emitted by one vendor's NIC (network interface card) would be uninterpretable to every other vendor's device on the same wire....

🔐 SHA-3 / SHAKE Technical Brief for SoC Security IP Design 📌 For hardware RTL designers — from algorithm internals to Verilog implementation and PQC integration Bottom line: A well-designed SHA-3 / SHAKE core covers ① integrity hashing, ② MAC (KMAC), ③ DRBG and stream generation, and ④ building blocks for post-quantum algorithms such as ML-KEM and ML-DSA — all from a single IP. This is why it is becoming a de facto mandatory IP as PQC mandates accelerate. 🧭 1. Standards Landscape — Why SHA-3 Now SHA-3 is NIST's next-generation hash standard, formalized in 2015 as FIPS 202 , built on the Keccak algorithm designed by Bertoni, Daemen, Peeters, and Van Assche. Unlike SHA-2's Merkle–Damgård construction, SHA-3 adopts a sponge construction that is structurally immune to length-extension attacks and supports variable output lengths from the same core. SHAKE128 / SHAKE256 share the same Keccak-p[1600, 24] permutation and serve as XOFs (extendable output function...