Pipelined computation of scalar multiplication in elliptic curve cryptosystems (extended version)

In the current work, we propose a pipelining scheme for implementing elliptic curve cryptosystems (ECC). The scalar multiplication is the dominant operation in ECC. It is computed by a series of point additions and doublings. The pipelining scheme is based on a key observation: to start the subsequent operation, one need not wait until the current one exits. The next operation can begin while a part of the current operation is still being processed. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to compute the scalar multiplication in such a pipelined manner. Also, the proposed scheme can be made resistant to sidechannel attacks (SCA). Our scheme compares favorably with all SCA-resistant sequential and parallel methods.