editor's blog
Subscribe Now

More Than Encyption and Decryption

The proliferation of nosy and evil people has made internet security increasingly important. I know… that sounds harsh, but it’s true… Why else would we keep hearing about data debacles? And this means that we’ve got to scramble all of our data before sending it so that someone can’t read or hijack it.

Which means encrypting and decrypting all data. And that’s compute-intensive. Which is why it’s almost always hardware-accelerated.

But there’s still effort involved in managing the security engine that does the encryption and decryption. Done at its simplest, a host receives a packet and sends it for decryption; when complete, the host can continue. The host is idle during that time, except for any other tasks the OS might toss in.

Elliptic has released a multi-packet manager that frees the host up from its need to micro-manage the security engine. Instead of working with one packet at a time, the host builds a linked list of packets to be encrypted or decrypted. When it gets a packet that needs security engine attention, it builds a packet descriptor including things like data and key location; that descriptor is attached to the list.

Instead of feeding the security engine each packet, the host now just points the security engine manager to the start of the list, and it can work all the way through to the end. The host can keep adding new packet descriptors to the end of the list while the engine works further up the list. Keys are cached to reduce fetch times.

The intent is that, by abstracting what the host has to worry about up one level, the host can get more done and let the security engine manager worry about the details that it used to have to handle.

More information in their release

Leave a Reply

featured blogs
Mar 24, 2023
With CadenceCONNECT CFD less than a month away, now is the time to make your travel plans to join us at the Santa Clara Convention Center on 19 April for our biggest CFD event of the year. As a bonus, CadenceCONNECT CFD is co-located with the first day of CadenceLIVE Silicon ...
Mar 23, 2023
Explore AI chip architecture and learn how AI's requirements and applications shape AI optimized hardware design across processors, memory chips, and more. The post Why AI Requires a New Chip Architecture appeared first on New Horizons for Chip Design....
Mar 10, 2023
A proven guide to enable project managers to successfully take over ongoing projects and get the work done!...

featured video

First CXL 2.0 IP Interoperability Demo with Compliance Tests

Sponsored by Synopsys

In this video, Sr. R&D Engineer Rehan Iqbal, will guide you through Synopsys CXL IP passing compliance tests and demonstrating our seamless interoperability with Teladyne LeCroy Z516 Exerciser. This first-of-its-kind interoperability demo is a testament to Synopsys' commitment to delivering reliable IP solutions.

Learn more about Synopsys CXL here

featured chalk talk

Solar Cells Optimized for Indoor Applications
Sponsored by Mouser Electronics and TDK
Solar cell technology is more popular than ever before, but we have only begun to scratch the surface when it comes to new applications for photovoltaic cell technology. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Chris Burket from TDK about the basics of photovoltaic cells, what sets TDK’s a-SI film solar cells away from other solar cell technology on the market today and the cool new applications that can take advantage of this powerful technology.
May 26, 2022
36,767 views