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Introduction
Programmable Peripheral
Application Note 018
Security of Design in the PSD3XX
By Oudi Moran
The PSD3XX is a family of field programmable and UV erasable microcontroller peripherals
that have the ability to interface to virtually any microcontroller without the need for external
glue logic.
Any PSD3XX family member is a complete microcontroller peripheral solution with Memory
(EPROM, SRAM), Logic, I/O Ports and a Security bit on chip.
In today’s competitive business environment, where the cost of the product and its quick
introduction to market are the most important factors for success, some companies tend to
copy a competitor’s design. By doing so, they can save development time which can reduce
their engineering cost and eventually reduce the product’s price and its introduction time to
the market.
This is true mainly for the consumer and commodity product markets where
microcontrollers are widely used. The PSD3XX, as the primary microcontroller peripheral,
contains all the important code and architectural data that a potential competitor may want
to copy.
Since the PSD3XX is a field programmable device, its contents may be read by an I.C.
programmer, decompiled and copied by a competitor.
Obviously, it is an undesirable situation for the EPROM, PAD and configuration data of
the PSD3XX to fall into the hands of a competitor. To prevent this, the PSD3XX device
implements a security “fuse” or programmable bit feature to protect its contents from
unauthorized access and use by a competitor.
Uploading the programmed data from EPROM, PAD, ACR and NVM port configuration
sections of a secured PSD3XX device is disabled by the security bit (if turned ON). The
RAM of the programmer (after trying to upload a secured PSD3XX device) will contain
invalid random data.
A secured PSD3XX device will function properly in the system – the microcontroller will be
able to access the EPROM, SRAM, PAD and the I/O ports but any attempt to read or verify
the contents of a secured PSD3XX by external hardware will fail.
PSD3XX devices contain non-volatile configuration bits to enable the user to set and
configure the device to the proper operational mode. The configuration bits will configure
the device to interface successfully with the microcontroller and also configure the PSD3XX
I/O Ports. The configuration bits are programmed during the programming phase and
cannot be accessed in operational mode.
During programming the configuration bits are programmed as two separate sections:
1) The ACR section of the PSD3XX device contains global configuration bits for proper
microcontroller interface. The security bit resides as an individual configuration bit in the
ACR section of the device.
2) The NVM section of the PSD3XX device contains port configuration bits for proper
set up of Ports A, B, and C.
PSD3XX devices use the security bit to prevent unauthorized access to the configuration
data inside. Since the security bit is part of the ACR global configuration bits section, it can
be programmed in the same manner as all other configuration bits.
Use of the
Security Bit
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