An Encryption-Enabled Network Protocol Accelerator

Even in light-weight wireless computing applications, processing of network-protocols becomes more and more computation- and energy-hungry, with increasing data rated and the need for security operations. To cope with such requirements and as alternative to heavyweight computation systems we propose an embedded system that is build for fast network-processing while supporting acceleration of state-of-the-art symmetric (AES) and asymmetric (ECC) cryptographic operations. We demonstrate how to build a dedicated TCP accelerating system based on a profiling analysis. We also discuss optimized implementations of the AES and ECC cryptographic protocols while considering the trade-off between software and hardware. Compared to an initial software-only implementation our final system accelerates the protocol handling by a factor of three, while the cryptographic operations are improved by two orders of magnitude. Our system which was manufactured in 0.25µm CMOS technology needs about 55 mW for a data rate of 40 MBit/sec.