FPGA implementation of a 2G fibre channel link encryptor with authenticated encryption mode GCM

Abstract

The Galois/counter mode (GCM) algorithm enables fast encryption combined with per-packet message authentication. This paper presents an FPGA implementation of a complete bidirectional 2 Gbps fibre channel link encryptor hosting two area-optimized GCM cores for concurrent authenticated encryption and decryption. The proposed architecture fits into one Xilinx Virtex-4 device. Measurements in a working network link point out that per-packet authentication results in a speed decrease up to 20% of the channel capacity for a reference frame length of 256 bits. Two methods of frame encryption are investigated to reduce the required GCM overhead and to exploit different network configurations.