Multi-threading elliptic curve cryptosystems

Elliptic Curve Cryptosystems (ECC) is being widely used in cryptographic systems due to its unique security features. In many cases, ECC had also been crafted onto specialized processor for performance reason. However, building a specialized ECC processor is not only time consuming but also costly. Therefore, from the cost-effectiveness point of view, the software approach of ECC in a multiprocessing environment is indeed more attractive, especially with the recent development in multi-core processors. The main objective of this research is therefore to implement identified parallel mathematical algorithms in multi-threading environment to support the development of ECC in software. Two parallel mathematical algorithms, Karatsuba and Montgomery, are incorporated and tested for point multiplication in Elliptic Curve (EC) algorithm to achieve high performance in execution for on-the-shelf multi-core architecture processors.