On the Hardware Implementation Cost of Crypto-Processors Architectures
Nicolas Sklavos · Information Security Journal A Global Perspective · 2010
A variety of modern technologies such as networks, Internet, and electronic services demand private and secure communications for a great number of everyday transactions. Security and cryptography provide a huge set of primitives, methods, and operation modes to support the special needs of data transmission. This paper aims to introduce aspects of design, architecture, and implementation of crypto-processors. It is aimed to demonstrate efficient realizations of cryptographic mechanisms and tools in terms of hardware integration. Computational methodologies, computer arithmetic, and encryption algorithms need deep investigation and research to obtain efficient integrations of crypto-processors, with desirable improvements and optimizations. Approaches on silicon achieve high values of speed and bandwidth. VLSI design is determined with FPGA and ASIC devices, which are two alternative design methodologies for implementing crypto-processors, with several advantages such as flexibility, high performance, and fast time to market. Reconfigurable computing techniques can change the system architectures to several different modes of operations without sacrificing design efficiency or performance.