“Secure life-cycle management is the foundation to maintaining the integrity of end-products,” said the firm. “The Synergy Platform Device Lifecycle Management [DLM] solution consists of Synergy security MCUs plus the associated Synergy software and tools enabling OEMs to better protect their software intellectual property IP from theft and cloning during manufacture, to inhibit counterfeit products, and to ensure authenticity when deploying secure remote firmware updates to end-products already in the field.”

The components are:

• Synergy MCUs, pre-programmed at Renesas to establish a root-of-trust that uniquely personalises each device.
• Software drivers, APIs, and middleware from Renesas to enable the MCUs at the device level.
• Example tools to manage, deploy, and program encrypted firmware files securely into MCUs on the production line and in the field.
• A development kit to simulate and evaluate the secure manufacturing and remote update scenarios.

On the production line, code to be embedded is stored securely on a server. The server serves code individually encrypted for each chip reaching the production programming station, and only a fixed number code copies are served. The aim of this technique is to prevent rogue manufacturers over-producing and selling the unauthorised production independently.

“These components and features afford OEMs the freedom to select from a much wider pool of contract manufacturers because the OEMs’ IP is protected during the entire distribution and flash memory programming process,” said Renesas.

Synergy Platform DLM will be offered in beta form to select customers starting April 2016 as a technology demonstrator. Release of the first Synergy Security MCUs, with all the other components supporting DLM in the Synergy Platform as a standard product, is slated for the first quarter of 2017.