Implementing the IDEA Cryptographic Algorithm in Virtex-E and Virtex-II FPGAs

Nowadays, the information security has achieved a great importance, both when information is sent through a non-secure network (as the Internet) and when data are stored in massive storage devices. The cryptographic algorithms are used in order to guarantee the security of data sent or stored. A lot of research is being done in order to try to improve the performance of the current cryptographic algorithms, including the use of FPGAs. In this work, we present a detailed research of the IDEA cryptographic algorithm implementation in VirtexE and Virtex2 FPGAs. Six different hardware implementations are presented, which are compared with each other and with the algorithm software implementation. In conclusion, the implementation of the IDEA algorithm using FPGAs offers advantages over software implementation, obtaining a performance 28 times better than the software version