Patent ID: 7454323

Claim:
A method of producing a simulation model of an electronic design, the method comprising: receiving a non-obfuscated version of the electronic design suitable for direct compilation into a practical hardware implementation of the electronic design; identifying a region of said electronic design into which a type of obfuscation may be added; adding obfuscation circuitry to said electronic design to produce an obfuscated version of the electronic design, wherein said obfuscation circuitry prevents practical implementation of the electronic design on a target hardware device; creating a simulation model using said obfuscated version of said electronic design, said simulation model being suitable for producing accurate hardware simulation results in a simulator but not being suitable to be directly compiled to produce a practical hardware implementation of the electronic design; storing said simulation model in a computer system; and wherein adding the obfuscation circuitry comprises: at a first location, adding circuitry for entangling multiple input signals to thereby spread out the input signals; and at a second location, adding circuitry for detangling an output signal resulting from the circuitry for entangling.