Altera CPLD / FPGA Microcontroller Unlock
Anything They Make, We Can Unlock! Professional unlock and firmware extraction for Altera MAX, EPM, EPC, and other programmable logic devices.
Anything They Make, We Can Unlock! Professional unlock and firmware extraction for Altera MAX, EPM, EPC, and other programmable logic devices.
We support unlock and firmware extraction for the following Altera CPLD / FPGA series. If your exact part isn't listed, contact us – we're constantly researching new types.
It is impossible to list all part numbers we can unlock. If your chip is not listed, please contact us – we can research new types to fit your demand.
Altera Corp. is a global semiconductor company, which serves customers within the telecom and wireless, industrial automation, military and automotive, networking, computer and storage, and other vertical markets. Its other vertical market includes sub-markets of broadcast, consumer, medical and test. It designs, manufactures, and markets a variety of products: Programmable logic devices (PLDs), which consist of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs), are standard semiconductor integrated circuits, or chips, that the company's customers program to perform desired logic functions in their electronic systems; power system-on-chip devices (PowerSoCs), simplifies and drives the miniaturization of power circuitry typically found in the electronic systems, intellectual property (IP) cores, which can be licensed by customers to add standard functions to their PLD designs; and Proprietary development software operates on personal computers and engineering workstations, is used by customers to develop, compile, and verify their designs, and then program their designs into PLDs. The company was founded in 1983 by Robert F. Hartmann, Michael Magranet, Paul Newhagen and James D. Sansbury and is headquartered in San Jose, CA. Despite the flexibility, FPGAs are not immune to side-channel attacks that could compromise sensitive designs.
Field Programmable Gate Arrays or FPGAs were once simple blocks of gates that can be configured by the user to implement the logic that he or she wants. In comparison, a microprocessor is a simplified CPU or Central Processing Unit. It executes a program that contains a specific set of instructions. The main difference between FPGAs and microprocessors is the complexity. Although both vary in complexity depending on the scale, microprocessors tend to be more complex than FPGAs. This is because of the various processes already implemented in it. Microprocessors already have a fixed set of instructions, which the programmers need to learn in order to create the appropriate working program. Each of these instructions has their own corresponding block that is already hardwired into the microprocessor. An FPGA doesn't have any hardwired logic blocks because that would defeat the field programmable aspect of it. An FPGA is laid out like a net with each junction containing a switch that the user can make or break. This determines how the logic of each block is determined. Programming an FPGA involves learning HDL or the Hardware Description Language; a low level language that some people say to be as difficult as assembly language. For security validation, some engineers perform firmware extraction to analyze the bitstream contents.
The development and drop in price of semiconductors and electronics in general has slowly blurred the lines between FPGAs and microprocessors by literally combining the two in a single package. This gives the combined package a lot more flexibility. The microprocessor does most of the actual processing but it passes off the more specific tasks to an FPGA block. This lets you obtain the best of both worlds. The microprocessor can handle the general tasks while custom FPGA blocks give you the ability to incorporate unique blocks. However, attempting to crack the encryption of configuration files is a serious concern for IP protection.
Altera- (ALTR) designs, manufactures, and markets programmable logic devices (PLD), application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC), pre-defined design building blocks, and associated development tools. It has operations primarily in North America, the Asia Pacific, Europe, and Japan. The company was founded in 1983 and is headquartered in San Jose, California. Certain debugging features may unlock hidden test modes, but they require careful handling.
What is FPGA? FPGA stands for Field Programmable Gate Array. Let's analyze the term: 1. Field-Programmable: An FPGA is manufactured to be easily reconfigured by developers, designers or customers. To program an FPGA as a specific configuration, Verilog HDL or VHDL (Hardware Description Language) is used as the standard language for FPGA programming. 2. Gate-Array: An FPGA consists of an array of programmable logic gates/ blocks such as AND, OR, XOR, NOT, memory elements, DSP components, etc., and reconfigurable interconnects which are to connect logic gates together for performing a specific function. Thus, FPGAs are nothing, but logic blocks and interconnects that can be programmable by Hardware Description Languages (Verilog HDL/ VHDL) to perform different complex functions. A bitstream dump is often the first step in analyzing a design's behavior.
In fact, FPGAs can be used to implement almost any DSP algorithm. Some FPGAs also obtain embedded soft-core processors such as Xilinx's MicroBlaze, Altera's Nios II, etc. so that we can use C, C++, etc. to program the processor like what we do with a microcontroller. Besides, the soft processors can communicate with hardware accelerators to speed up complex DSP operations so that we can obtain a better flexible embedded system for niche applications. Reverse engineering of the bitstream is sometimes needed for legacy system maintenance.
As an FPGA designer for several years, here are five reasons why I love FPGA design: 1. Very fast on-chip (FPGA) demonstration. The top reason why I love FPGA design is that it is very fast to verify a design on FPGA. While ASICs could take several months only for tape-out and another latency for PCB design, everything is settled on FPGA and we just need to download the program file to FPGA using a specific FPGA programming tool and see how it works on FPGA. FPGA boards of Xilinx and Altera provide necessary IOs and additional support circuits such as LCD, single LEDs, 7-segment LEDs, communication ports (USB, UART, VGA, HDMI, PS2, FMC, etc.), ADCs, DACs, CODEC, etc. so that FPGA can easily communicate with other chips for the verification process. A malicious hack could reprogram the device on-the-fly, so secure boot is critical.
If you don't see your exact microcontroller model in our list, we may still be able to help. Our research team continuously expands the supported device database.
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