(iTers News) – A growing bunch of digital TVs are going online, allowing TV viewers to get access to the Internet to download a variety of digital content providers like Netflix and Lulu, which are offering, VOD, or video on demand services. The proliferation of two-way and interactive Internet-capable digital TVs presents digital TV makers tough technological challenges, however, as they have to work out a way to protect intellectual property rights of digital content providers, or DRM(digital rights management).

Kilopass Technology Inc. of the U.S. will be able to help digital TV and digital set-top-box, or STB makers tackle the challenges.

A leading provider of semiconductor logic non-volatile memory (NVM) intellectual property (IP), Kilopass Technology Inc. has been working with an array of SOC chip makers to implement its XMP IP on digital TV and STB SOC decoder ICs.

A short for eXtra Permanent Memory, the XPM IP is all about data encryption key storage technology, which securely change and rescind encryption keys.

The most recent case is that the IP provider has worked together with SICMICRO, Chongqing Silian Microelectronics Co., Ltd. of China to implement its XPM IP on the Chinese   chip maker’s front-end SOC decoder chips for digital TV STBs.

The design- win was mainly attributed to the failure of passive, semi-invasive, and invasive tampering methods to hack XPM NVM IP, because the special memory IP contains encryption key storage.

The ability to securely reprogram the memory in the field to enable, change, or rescind encryption keys was also another factor for the design-win.

"We are developing our next generation of digital TV set-top box SoC system decoder chip that will provide complete two-way access systems for digital TV set-top boxes and cable television networks solutions," said Jingning Zhang, vice president of marketing at SICMICRO.

"This new high-definition interactive multi-standard system-on-chip design will support a variety of triple play services. It demands secure tamper-proof storage for intellectual property rights of high-definition, multi-standard video from a variety of content providers.  The Kilopass XPM non-volatile memory IP block provided the right solution,” added he

"We are very pleased that SICMICRO chose our XPM IP for their set top box SoC," said Linh Hong, vice president of marketing at Kilopass Technology Inc. "China is an emerging market for consumer electronics, especially digital TV.  Kilopass has broad and deep experience in this market.

Our NVM IP has shipped in over 20 million set-top boxes and in excess of 50 million DVD chip sets providing secure storage of valuable digital rights management information.  With the win at SICMICRO, our IP now has a total available market of over a hundred million."

Due to the nature of the technology, it is difficult to determine the content of the memory. Passive techniques such as using current profiles to determine the word pattern are unsuccessful because the bitcell current for "0"s and "1"s are much smaller than the current required for sensing or to operate the peripheral circuits in order to read the memory. One cannot determine the pattern of the word being read.  Invasive techniques such as backside attacks or scanning electron microscope (SEM) passive voltage contrast are unsuccessful because it is very difficult to isolate the bitcell since it is connected in a cross point array.

Jointly invested by China Silian Instrument Group Co., Chongqing Silian Microelectronics Co., Ltd., SICMICRO, was established in February 2009 as a state-owned integrated circuit design company.

SICMICRO has designed proprietary, world-class digital audio and video signal processing integrated circuit chip (SoCs) for use in high definition digital television terminal equipment as well as two-way cable network access system and core components..

With 58 patents granted or pending and more than 800,000 wafers shipped from a dozen foundries and Integrated Device Manufacturers (IDM), the Santa Clara, California-based Kilopass has more than 100 customers in applications ranging from storage of firmware and security codes to calibration data and other application-critical information.