Methods and devices for securely providing personalities to reconfigurable
hardware. Reconfigurable hardware is provided with one or more domains.
At least one domain serves as a gatekeeper domain and another domain
serves as a task domain. A service provider provides an authentication
and security personality to the gatekeeper domain. The hardware is
shipped to the user. A user then accesses the service provider via a
network connection and downloads a task personality into the task domain,
but only if the personality in the gatekeeper domain allows the download
to take place. Once the task personality completes a task, the user may
download another task personality into the task domain, if permitted by
the personality loaded in the gatekeeper domain. The domains and
personalities are managed and made available by the service provider.