A high-speed DES implementation for network applications

Abstract

A high-speed data encryption chip implementing the Data Encryption Standard (DES) has been developed. The DES modes of operation supported are Electronic Code Book and Cipher Block Chaining. The chip is based on a gallium arsenide (GaAs) gate array containing 50K transistors. At a clock frequency of 250MHz, data can be encrypted or decrypted at a rate of 1 GBit/second, making this the fastest singlechip implementation reported to date. High performance and high density have been achieved by using custom-designed circuits to implement the core of the DES algorithm. These circuits employ precharged logic. a methodology novel to the design of GaAs devices. A pipelined flow-through architecture and an efficient key exchange mechanism make this chip suitable for low-latency network controllers.