HiPCrypto: a high-performance VLSI cryptographic chip

Data security is an important issue in today's computer networks. This paper presents the HiPCrypto chip, which implements the IDEA cryptographic algorithm. HiPCrypto is oriented towards computer network applications demanding high throughput. Its architecture exploits both the spatial and the temporal parallelism available in the IDEA algorithm. When operating at a 53 MHz clock, HiPCrypto can encrypt/decrypt at data rates up to 3.4 Gbps.