Rodriguez-Henriquez Francisco, Saqib N.A., Diaz-Perez A., Koc Cetin Kaya. Cryptographic Algorithms on Reconfigurable Hardware

New York: Springer, 2006. — 384 p. — (Signals and Communication Technology). — ISBN13: 978-0-387-33883-5.Cryptographic solutions using software methods can be used for those security applications where data traffic is not too large and low encryption rate is tolerable. On the other hand, hardware methods offer high-speed solutions making them highly suitable for applications where data traffic is fast and large data is required to be encrypted in real time. VLSI (also known as ASIC), and FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) are two alternatives for implementing cryptographic algorithms in hardware. FPGAs offer several benefits for cryptographic algorithm implementations over VLSI as they offer high flexibility. Due to its reconfigurable property, keys can be changed rapidly. Moreover, basic primitives in most cryptographic algorithms can efficiently be implemented in FPGAs.