Single-chip FPGA implementation of a cryptographic co-processor

A secure communications protocol contains a symmetric key cryptosystem, a hash algorithm and a method for providing digital signatures and key exchange using public key cryptography. This paper presents an implementation of these core ciphers on a single FPGA. A novel architecture combining a symmetric-key and message authentication algorithm is proposed, with FIFO memory blocks used as buffers to allow them run in parallel from the same data source. The generation of digital signatures and key exchange using a modular exponentiator core block is also considered. The complete design is implemented on a PCI prototyping card containing a Xilinx Virtex-2000E FPGA and SRAM memory banks. To optimise the data transfer rate between the SRAMs and the FPGA, the memory interface and encryption cores are partitioned into separate clock domains. Comparisons are then made between theoretical results from timing analysis reports and implemented results on the prototyping card.