A high performance VLSI chip of the elliptic curve cryptosystems

A high performance VLSI for elliptic curve cryptosystems, based on the elliptic curve K-233 in the field GF(2²³³), THECC/233-100, is presented in this paper. It can perform all four computational functionalities: the digital signature generation and verification; the curve point-multiplication; and the public-secret key-pair generation, needed by the ECDSA protocol. The chip has been successfully designed and fabricated with Shanghai SMIC 0.18 μm CMOS technology. Its scale is about 122 K equivalent gates with an area of 2.34×2.34 mm². Tests show that it works properly at a frequency no less than 100 MHz. The chip can reach a very high performance by carrying out more than 4000 digital signature generations per second with a key size of 231 bits, which means even stronger encryption than 2048 bit RSA, which is the fastest hardware implementation of ECC in the field GF(2²³³) according to the known publications, until now.