International Arab Journal of Information Technology (IAJIT), vol. 4, no. 1, January, 2007.

 

Area Flexible GF(2k) Elliptic Curve Cryptography Coprocessor

 

ADNAN ABDUL-AZIZ GUTUB

Computer Engineering Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran 31261, SAUDI ARABIA

gutub@kfupm.edu.sa

 

Abstract. Elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) is popularly defined either over GF(p) or GF(2k). This research modifies a GF(p) multiplication algorithm to make it applicable for GF(2k). Both algorithms, the GF(p) and GF(2k) one, are designed in hardware to be compared. The GF(2k) multiplier is found faster and small. This GF(2k) multiplier is further improved to benefit in speed, it gained more than 40% faster speed with the cost of 5% more area. This multiplier hardware is furthermore adjusted to have area flexibility feature, which is used as the basic block in modeling a complete projective coordinate GF(2k) ECC coprocessor.

 

Keywords. Elliptic curve cryptography, Modular multiplication, Area flexible multiplier, Projective coordinates arithmetic