Hardware implementation of an elliptic curve processor over GF(p)

Abstract

We describe a hardware implementation of an arithmetic processor which is efficient for bit-lengths suitable for both commonly used types of public key cryptography (PKC), i.e., elliptic curve (EC) and RSA cryptosystems. Montgomery modular multiplication in a systolic array architecture is used for modular multiplication. The processor consists of special operational blocks for Montgomery modular multiplication, modular addition/subtraction, EC point doubling/addition, modular multiplicative inversion, EC point multiplier, projective to affine coordinates conversion and Montgomery to normal representation conversion.