A
system and method for securing a
system-on-
chip (SoC)
field programmable gate array (FPGA) is provided, wherein the SoC FPGA includes an FPGA fabric, a
soft core processor hosted within the FPGA fabric, a
hard core processor, and a secure boot environment for the SOC FPGA. Monitoring logic monitors for a change in the FPGA fabric. External watchdog logic is configured to receive a trigger
signal from the monitoring logic, and force the
hard core processor(s) of the SoC FPGA into a reset state with no ability to recover unless power is cycled when a change has been made to the FPGA fabric, so as to provide a “fail secure”
scenario. The monitoring logic may be
firmware hosted on the FPGA fabric,
software hosted on the
soft core,
software hosted on the
hard core, and / or external hard logic.