Efficient Security Processor for Mobile Applications

Abstract

Optimized cryptographics are needed given the tremendous growth of social networks in recent years. The functionality and security of these applications rely on the capability of cryptographic accelerators in providing adequate performance with less energy consumption while maintaining flexibility. A programmable cryptographic processor prototype that supports Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and elliptic curve (EC) ciphering is presented in this paper. We perform optimizations on both software and hardware sides. On the software side, we optimize the software implementation of ECC in consideration of algorithm complexity. On the hardware side, we develop the dedicated micro-architecture for applications according to specific instructions. The proposed processor is implemented by using commercial ESL tool. Compared to state of art, our custom processor improves processing speed for AES and ECC by up to 58.6% and 41.6%, respectively. The code size is reduced by up to 48.7% for AES and 44.5% for ECC. Therefore, this compact implementation is suitable for battery based mobile device.