Key Generation - Key Generation - 2026.1 English - UG1283

Bootgen User Guide (UG1283)

Document ID
UG1283
Release Date
2026-06-23
Version
2026.1 English

Versal AI Edge Series Gen 2 and Versal Prime Series Gen 2 devices use AES-GCM for encryption, which supports robust key management. Bootgen uses seed as input which supports deriving multiple keys from seed due to key rolling. If a seed is specified, the keys are derived using the seed. If seeds are not specified, keys are derived based on Key0. If an empty key file is specified, Bootgen automatically generates a seed, which in turn is the input for KDF to generate the Key/IV pairs.

Important: AMD recommends that you generate your own keys for fielded systems using a high-quality entropy source and then provide those keys to the development tools. Bootgen key generation is intended for development use only. See AR76171 for more information.
Note: In this flow you must generate the seed from a high-quality entropy source when the seed is specified; otherwise generate Key0 from a high-quality entropy source. That input should then be provided to the tools.

Consistent Key Usage Across Generated Files

You explicitly provide an encryption file for the first partition, and you auto-generate files for later partitions. In that case, Bootgen uses the same Key0/IV0 pair from the first file for all subsequently generated keys. This ensures consistency in the cryptographic parameters.

Error on Mismatched Key0/IV0 in Later Partitions

If an encryption file is generated for the first partition and a manually specified encryption file using the same Key0/IV0 is provided for a later partition, Bootgen terminates and return an error due to an invalid reuse of the Key0/IV0 pair.

Default Key Generation per Partition

If you do not explicitly specify an encryption file but enable encryption on a partition, Bootgen automatically generates an AES key file. Bootgen names the file after the partition. This ensures that each partition uses a distinct AES key for encryption.

Support for Multiple Loadable Sections

For partitions that results in multiple loadable sections, Bootgen allows the use of unique key files per section. It performs either by reading or generating AES key files suffixed with extensions like .1, .2, ..., .n, placed in the same directory as the original partitions key file.