Instruction set extensions for Triple DES processing on a multi-threaded software-defined radio platform

Software-defined radio (SDR) is an emerging technology that facilitates having multiple wireless communication protocols on one device. Current wireless communication protocols, such as HSDPA, HSPA+, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and LTE, have significant performance requirements while running on this class of device. For these wireless protocols, encryption is often used to protect user data being transmitted over the air. The Triple Data Encryption Standard (TDES) is an important cryptographic algorithm in wireless communication systems, and acceleration of this algorithm on SDR platforms is necessary for future-generation speeds. This paper presents instruction set architecture extensions and hardware designs for TDES implemented on a multi-threaded SDR platform, and investigates their impacts on area, performance, and power. Our results indicate that our proposed extensions improve the performance of TDES by a factor of 39 and reduce energy by 97%, while increasing average power by only 34%.