One of my clients, and some years ago, designed a PC-based product around a single fpga and config rom. He had his boards made and assembled in Taiwan and then had his product distributed through a major distributor.

Within six weeks of his first shipment, he had more RMA's than product he'd sold.

As it turned out, someone in Taiwan had a brother-in-law, or other connection, who worked at the PCB house that made his boards, and got a bunch of rejected boards, then simply cloned the packaging and documentation, etc, purchased the FPGA and config ROM, assembled the defective boards and sold them to a distributor, who happily sold 'em to the unsuspecting world.

This ran my client out of business, causing him and his partner considerable financial stress, and I believe, resulted in his partners' suicide. Since then, I've NEVER recommend an FPGA with external config ROM for any mass-produced product, since the bitstream from the config ROM is there in plain view for anyone and everyone to see, monitor, and replicate.

Mayabe these newer parts that Andy Peters says XILINX has announced will fix that. I haven't yet read the datasheets. They (XILINX and ALTERA) have made previous attempts at that with limited success.

RE