Intel Agilex® 7 Device Security User Guide

ID 683823
Date 7/07/2023
Public
Document Table of Contents

4.9.3. Black Key Provisioning

The  Intel® Quartus® Prime Programmer assists in establishing a mutually authenticated secure connection between the Intel Agilex® 7 device and the black key provisioning service. The secure connection is established via https and requires several certificates identified using a text file.

Note: When using Black Key Provisioning, Intel recommends that you avoid externally connecting the TCK pin to pull up or pull down a resistor while still using it for JTAG. However, you may connect the TCK pin to the VCCIO SDM power supply using a 10 kΩ resistor. The existing guidance in the Pin Connection Guidelines to connect TCK to a 1 kΩ pull-down resistor is included for noise suppression. The change in guidance to a 10 kΩ pull-up resistor doesn't affect the device functionally. For more information about connecting the TCK pin, refer to Intel Agilex® 7 Pin Connection Guidelines.

The bkp_tls_ca_cert certificate authenticates your black key provisioning service instance to your black key provisioning programmer instance. The bkp_tls_* certificates authenticate your black key provisioning programmer instance to your black key provisioning service instance.

You create a text file containing the necessary information for the  Intel® Quartus® Prime Programmer to connect to the black key provisioning service. To initiate black key provisioning, use the Programmer command line interface to specify the black key provisioning options text file. The black key provisioning then proceeds automatically. For access to the black key provisioning service and associated documentation, please contact Intel Support.

You can enable the black key provisioning using the quartus_pgm command:
quartus_pgm -c <cable> -m <programming_mode> --device <device_index> \
--bkp_options=bkp_options.txt
The command arguments specify the following information:
  • -c: cable number
  • -m: specifies the programming mode such as JTAG
  • --device: specifies a device index on the JTAG chain. Default value is 1.
  • --bkp_options: specifies a text file containing black key provisioning options.