High-performance finite field multiplier for cryptographic applications
Jonathan Lutz, M.A. Hasan · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2003
In FIPS 186-2, NIST recommends several finite fields to be used in the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA). Of the ten recommended finite fields, five are binary extension fields with degrees ranging from 163 to 571. The performance of the underlying field operations (i.e. addition and multiplication) directly affect the performance of the ECDSA algorithm. In this paper we discuss a high performance look-up table-based VLSI architecture which performs multiplication over a given finite field. First we present the architecture in a general form which can be implemented for any finite field and corresponding reduction polynomial. Following, we discuss a prototype implementation of the multiplier for the binary extension field with degree 163. The prototype is capable of performing a finite field multiplication in .06 microseconds when implemented on a Xilinx XCV2000E FPGA.