A Dynamic FPGA Implementation of the Serpent Block Cipher

  • Authors:
  • Cameron Patterson

  • Affiliations:
  • -

  • Venue:
  • CHES '00 Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems
  • Year:
  • 2000

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Abstract

A JBits implementation of the Serpent block cipher in a Xilinx FPGA is described. JBits provides a Java-based Application Programming Interface (API) for the run-time modification of the configuration bitstream. This allows dynamic circuit specialization based on a specific key and mode (encrypt or decrypt). Subkeys are computed in software and treated as constants in the Serpent datapath. The resulting logic optimization produces a circuit that is half the size and twice the speed of a static, synthesized implementation. With a throughput of over 10 Gigabits per second, the JBits implementation has sufficient bandwidth for SONET OC-192c (optical) networks.