Design and implementation of an ASIP-based cryptography processor for AES, IDEA, and MD5

Abstract

In this paper, a new 32-bit ASIP-based crypto processor for AES, IDEA, and MD5 is designed. The instruction-set consists of both general purpose and specific instructions for the above cryptographic algorithms. The proposed architecture has nine function units and two data buses. It has also two types of 32-bit instruction formats for executing Memory Reference (M.R.), Register Reference (R.R.), and Input/Output Reference (I/O R.) instructions. The maximum achieved frequency is 166.916MHz. The encoded output results of the encryption process of a 128-bit input block are obtained after 122, 146 and 170 clock cycles for AES-128, AES-192, and AES-256, respectively. Moreover, it takes 95 clock cycles to encrypt or decrypt a 64-bit input block by using IDEA. Finally, the MD5 hash algorithm requires 469 clock cycles to generate the coded outputs for a block of 512bits. The performance of the proposed processor is compared to some previous and state-of-the-art implementations in terms of speed, latency, throughput, and flexibility.