Gene Sequence Inspired Vhdl Plagiarism Screening

Abstract

Plagiarism of digital system designs has become increasingly convenient with the emergence of language-based design techniques. Detection and proof of plagiarism are similarly facilitated. This has long been an issue in computer programming courses and non-technical courses that rely heavily on text based assignments. However, until recently, digital design instruction was based on graphical design methods that did not adapt well to electronic cut-and-paste or web searches. Tools are needed to encourage and verify the originality of digital designs. Such tools exist for many programming languages and for essay text, but not for hardware description language (HDL) based digital design. In this paper, we present an implementation of HDL plagiarism checking that is similar to what is used to evaluate the similarity and ancestry of gene sequences. This form of plagiarism screening has been used for one semester in a digital integrated circuit design course. Other less effective and efficient methods were in use for two years. Results show a strong sensitivity to commonality between closely related source code files, even in the presence of a variety of obfuscation techniques.

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