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Implementation of an AES Hardware Processing Engine (B/S)

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Introduction

The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) [1] is an encryption algorithm used in many of today's applications. It operates in multiple rounds on fixed-size data blocks, converting a clear-text data stream into an encrypted one (or vice-versa). This process is computationally expensive, and can become a bottleneck when applied on large amounts of data. A solution to this problem is a dedicated hardware accelerator that directly operates on the data that should be en-/decrypted.

Project

This project proposes to implement an AES accelerator for the PULP platform [2], interfacing as a Hardware Processing Engine (HWPE) [3] and operating directly on the Tightly-Coupled Data Memory (TCDM), to serve as a baseline for future follow-up work, and to provide an open-source reference implementation that is compatible with PULP. The main components of this thesis are:

  • RTL-implementation of the AES HWPE,
  • Validation the design using existing reference implementations,
  • Performing a basic design-space exploration of the accelerator.

Depending on the progress, the component can furthermore be integrated into PULPissimo [4], and prepared for a tape-out.

Requirements
  • Strong interest in hardware design
  • Experience with HDLs (preferably SystemVerilog) such as taught in VLSI I
  • Knowledge of ASIC tool flow (Synthesis) or parallel enrollment with VLSI II is beneficial

Composition: 25% Design specification, 25% RTL Implementation, 25% Verification, 25% Synthesis and design-space exploration

Project Supervisors

References