Design and implementation of a coprocessor for cryptography applications
A. Royo, Javier Morán, Juan Carlos López · 1997
In this paper, an ASIC suitable for cryptography applications based on modular arithmetic techniques, is presented. These applications, such as for example digital signature (DSA) and public key encryption and decryption (RSA), use, as basic operation, the modular exponentiation. This ASIC works as a coprocessor with a special set of instructions specialized on dealing with high accuracy integers, as well as on the rapid evaluation of modular multiplications and exponentiations. The algorithm, the hardware architecture, the design methodology and the results are described in detail. 1. Introduction Security has become a key issue in the world of electronic communication. Besides how fast data are transmitted, the security of these data through the communication channel arises as one of the most important problems. Though, the time overhead due to data encryption and decryption should not impose a bottleneck in the communication process. Public key cryptography (RSA), as well as othe...