Silicon Chip Design for Codasip
Use Case
Overview:
Lockular's Provenance suite has been effectively deployed in the niche sector of Silicon Chip Design and Manufacturing, tailored specifically for Codasip, a pioneer in customized RISC-V design tools. This implementation incorporates three primary components from the Lockular Supply Chain Provenance suite: SecureWorking, Workflow Actor Management (WAM), and the NFT Marketplace platform. This integration guarantees unalterable traceability (provenance) of three essential elements of the design process: the foundational chip designs, the utilisation of design outputs (such as SDK's), and the evolving configuration of teams working together on a design.
Workflow Actor Management (WAM):
WAM is critical in shaping and overseeing the cooperative relationships among organisations involved in the chip design and manufacturing processes. Using Smart contract technology, WAM sets strict protocols that dictate how these organisations interact, collaborate, and exchange design information. This organised approach ensures a high level of precision and compliance throughout the collaborative efforts. WAM ensures provenance records pertaining to the structure of the collaborative teams are tracked and maintained at all times ensuring full historic knowledge of those involved in a chip or part chip design.
SecureWorking:
SecureWorking is used to offer chip designers a cloud-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE) powered by Microsoft Visual Studio Code, specifically tailored for Codasip's chip design toolchain. The cloud setup is securely isolated, supported by the Lockular Provenance Tracking filesystem, which ensures comprehensive tracking and security of all activities and design data within the environment. Access to this platform is tightly controlled by Codasip-specific smart contracts managed by WAM, ensuring that only authorised personnel can access and contribute to designs, and ensuring team structure is immutable tracked and recorded over time.
Provenance Tracking and Security:
Every aspect of the designs produced within the SecureWorking IDE are continuously monitored and documented on a dedicated Polkadot parachain (blockchain) by Lockular's Provenance Tracking filesystem. This blockchain-based monitoring system provides a permanent record of all design actions, modifications, and accesses, significantly enhancing the security and traceability of the design process. This detailed monitoring is essential for protecting intellectual property and maintaining the integrity of the design process in the highly competitive and secretive chip design sector. Provenance records and reports are a significant component in fulfilling the requirement of the US ITAR standard used across the US defense sector.
Integration with NFT Marketplace:
The NFT Marketplace is utilised to tokenise design outputs or intellectual property. Design outputs often take the form of part designs known as IP Blocks. The NFT marketplace facilitates rigours controlled design sharing with immutable provenance tracking of the shared objects. In Codasip's case, this enables the sharing of common chip IP block definitions amongst teams within the partner network controlled by WAM based smart contracts. IP Blocks form the basis of a larger single chip designs.
Benefit:
The implementation of Lockular's Provenance suite has enabled Codasip to effortlessly integrate its chip design tool chain with SecureWorking, instantly providing a secure, cloud-based design environment complete with comprehensive provenance tracking benefits. This integration has not only strengthened the security and integrity of the design process but also improved collaboration and compliance, resulting in increased productivity and innovation within Codasip's chip design platform. Codasip has branded this integration as Secure Studio in the Cloud (SSitC) and is working with Lockular to promote the Provenance Supply Chain for RISC-V design services.