Design and Implementation of an Ultra Low Power RSA Coprocessor

This paper describes the design and implementation of an ultra low power RSA coprocessor. By improving the Montgomery's algorithm, and using several low power techniques on the design of the RSA coprocessor, this paper has designed a RSA coprocessor with ultra low power consumption and high performance. The RSA coprocessor is implemented using TSMC 0.18 um CMOS technology in one of the ZTEIC Corporation's intellectual cards. It can execute 512 bit/ 1024 bit/ 2048 bit RSA modular exponentiations. When executing 1024 bit RSA operations, the throughput is about 107.5 kbps at 200 MHz clock. When executing 2048 bit RSA operations, the throughput is about 57 kbps at 200 Mhz. It's maximum power consumption is 32.5 mW when executing 2048 bit RSA modular exponentiation.