Achronix Semiconductor Corporation

Data encryption is a key component of modern communication technology. In fact, its importance is growing steadily, due to:

• Increased variety (data/voice/video) of traffic
• Increased exposure of traffic (Internet)
• Increasing use of public networks for highly sensitive data (financial, medical records, proprietary trade secret company data, etc.)

Broadly speaking, “security” is a concern of today’s network providers and users, and data encryption is a key element of any network security policy. Historically, Data Encryption Standard (DES) was the popular algorithm for such encryption needs, but in 2001, the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) was adopted by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and now dominates the scene.

An AES application, like any data encryption process, is inherently computationally intensive, requiring many arithmetic and bit-manipulation operations.

These operations can be performed either in software or hardware. The high-throughput demands of public-network applications require hardware implementations. Not only do they require hardware, but they require very high-performance hardware – for either multiple streams or very high-throughput single streams.

The underlying functional actions used by the AES algorithm are highly computational – involving lookups, shifts, exchanges, adds, multiplies, and logical operations. They are also highly repetitive, and hence are conducive to optimization through pipelining. Achronix’ picoPIPE™ acceleration technology excels with designs amenable to pipelining concepts. Not only the LUT-based logic fabric, but also the embedded RAMs and multipliers use special picoPIPE structures to achieve unprecedented performance.

In addition to the picoPIPE logic fabric, which is ideal for the required data processing tasks, the I/O and SerDes resources available on the Speedster^® products are more than up to the task of moving the data in and out of the device. In particular, the on-chip SerDes operate at rates up to 10.3 Gbps – a rate otherwise unavailable in the FPGA world.

For these reasons Speedster FPGAs are ideal platforms for high-performance encryption.