CAREER: Computer Arithmetic Algorithms and Scalable Hardware Designs for Cryptographic Applications

Oregon State University, Corvallis OR

Investigators

Abstract

Cryptography has gained interest from the industry as a result of the increasing electronic commerce market. The secure utilization of electronic devices in business transactions frequently involves cryptography in order to protect or verify the authenticity of the information being transferred by these devices. For several applications, the hardware implementation should not only be fast, but also to have features such as low power, reduced area, and scalability. This project involves the investigation and development of scalable structures for arithmetic operations for cryptography. Scalability is defined here as the capability to compute any long-precision result using fixed precision arithmetic units. These arithmetic units are adjustable to the available area, organized for concurrent execution, and reused as needed to obtain any desired precision. This project explores new computer arithmetic algorithms and design strategies for basic operations in cryptographic applications, leading to reusable, scalable, and efficient implementations. The utilization of design alternatives such as digit codes, scheduling techniques (space and time), and system organization will be considered in detail. The PI looks into operations in Galois Fields GF(p) and GF(2^m). These operations are used in classical cryptographic algorithms and the more recent Elliptic Curve cryptography, which offers a higher degree of security.