A High-Performance Unified-Field Reconfigurable Cryptographic Processor

With rapid increases in communication and network applications, cryptography has become a crucial issue to ensure the security of transmitted data. In this paper, we propose a microcode-based architecture with a novel reconfigurable datapath which can perform either prime field GF(
p
) operations or binary extension field GF(2
^m
) operations for arbitrary prime numbers, irreducible polynomials, and precision. Using these field arithmetic units, users are capable of programming cryptographic algorithms in microcode sequences for full compliance with a majority of public-key cryptographic algorithms such as Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) and elliptic curve cryptosystems. An algorithmic optimization or refinement can thus be made at a higher level based on the reconfigurable datapath. Experimental results show that the developed processor has full cryptography algorithm flexibility, high hardware utilization, and high performance.