A 1 Mbs energy/security scalable encryption processor using adaptive width and supply

In many applications, it is desirable to design digital processors that allow a trade-off between the quality of service (QoS) provided and the energy consumed to process a sample. This allows the user to evaluate the application requirements and set the desired quality while minimizing the energy consumption. This paper presents an energy-scalable encryption processor in which the level of security (i.e., quality) and energy consumed to encrypt a bit can be traded-off dynamically, based on demand. Since transmitted data streams can often be partitioned into different priority levels, an energy-scalable processor ensures that important information is adequately protected, while sacrificing some security for low priority data, to reduce total system energy.