A Unified-Multiplier Based Hardware Architecture for Elliptic Curve Cryptography
From iis-projects
Short Description
An application-specific instruction-set processor (ASIP) tailored to verify digital signatures according to the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) based on the NIST B-233 standard was developed. The resulting chip, called Halley, features a 16-bit wide unified datapath for both the binary and prime finite-field arithmetic, required to finish an ECDSA signature verification. It hosts a 2KB dual-port memory for data storage and a 6KB single-port instruction memory. A two-stage finite-state machine (FSM) controlling approach is used to realize the finite-field arithmetic. Moreover, the top-level controlling entity is made up by a programmable control unit, which realizes the elliptic-curve-specific operations. Halley finishes digital signature verification at its maximum frequency of 167Mhz within about 1.9Mcycles, meanwhile consuming an average power of 70mW.
In addition to the "pseudo-processor-controlled approach", the finite-field arithmetic supporting datapath was combined with an OpenRISC microprocessor, thereby enabling accelerated ECDSA verification on a general purpose CPU.
Project Information
- Date: Fall Semester 2013 (sem13h5)
- Students: Sven Stucki, Andreas Traber
- Supervisors: Michael Muehlberghuber, Beat Muheim
