4 ms·

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see the reason.

• zymhan 10y ago
  Um, what? Your comment makes no sense.
• random28345 10y ago
  > Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see the reason. You are correct, you do not see the reason.
• diydsp 10y ago
  You are right. FPGAs are software that runs on dedicated ASICs, just like microcontrollers and CPUs. The difference is the software may be partitioned to run on a large number of simple cores or one big complex core or anything in between. As software, it's vulnerable to bugs and intrusion. You may gain some obscurity, but professionals know that's non-enduring.
  • pjc50 10y ago
    > FPGAs are software that runs on dedicated ASICs, just like microcontrollers and CPUs. What? This either doesn't make sense or is wrong. > The difference is the software may be partitioned to run on a large number of simple cores or one big complex core or anything in between. Nothing to do with FPGAs; you wouldn't necessarily have anything resembling a CPU core at all in there. A critical advantage of FPGAs for security is that logic is inherently "partitioned": there's no stack to smash, no heap, and no easy way to write over variables that are used for something else. Even if you do manage an exploit, you can't make it persistent as the FPGA may not have the capability to overwrite its own bitstream.
    • doc_holliday 10y ago
      I would imagine in such a case exploits would be very rare. It would need to be a very specific exploit and yes there is little scope for what can be exploited as it FPGA is designed for very specific task unlike a general purpose CPU in server. You would need to have deep knowledge of the HDL to even begin to think up an exploit.