The invention relates to the field of integrated circuits and aims to provide an IP
hard core intellectual property protection method and device based on
path delay, wherein the IP
hard core intellectual property protection method and device can be used for
intellectual property protection of a timing sequence logic which can be applied to input and output and needs multiple
delay periods. The IP
hard core intellectual property protection method and device can effectively prevent various IP core theft problems, such as a
brute force attack, a cleaning
attack and
reverse engineering. According to the technical scheme, the IP hard core intellectual property protection method based on the
path delay comprises the following steps that 1, signals need to pass through a timing sequence logic path circuit of multiple time periods from input to output; 2, a protective path is designed; 3, a designed protective circuit comprises a shifting register, a
finite state machine circuit and an interconnecting line, wherein the shifting register is used for storing an initialization secret key, the
finite state machine circuit is used for secrete key checking, and the
signal delay of the interconnecting line is adjustable; 4, the purpose of protecting a circuit IP is achieved by adjusting and controlling the input and output
delay of the protective circuit and the protected circuit. The IP hard core intellectual property protection method and device based on the
path delay are mainly applied to integrated circuits.