Cryptographic Features for Network Processors

Motivation and Background

With the introduction of Gbits per second networks and many new services that require high volume packet processing at high network speeds specialized processors architectures, i.e. network processors were introduced. The Intel IXP architecture, for instance, can support several Gbits per second line rates, with an architecture build around 8/16/32 Intel XScale processor cores. The resource rich cores share banks of local memory for passing data shared among thread of execution.

On high end networks where such powerful network processors are employed, any intensive computation on a node will inevitably create a communication bottleneck. On the other hand, on such networks it is highly desirable to support IPSec, SSL and various other security protocols. Due to the computationally expensive nature of some cryptographic schemes and the high throughput restriction, it is essential that cryptographic features are analyzed and implemented on network processors even by adding hardware support for cryptographic operations, when necessary.

Our Research

We investigate the viability of common cryptographic security primitives on network processors (specifically on the Intel IXP 2800 series). Our scope includes public and secret key cryptographic primitives, hash functions, and random number generators.

Publications

G. Gaubatz and B. Sunar, Leveraging the Multiprocessing Capabilities of Modern Network Processors for Cryptographic Acceleration. 4^th IEEE International Symposium on Network Computing and Applications (NAC '05), Cambridge, Massachusetts, July 2005. (PDF)

Relevant Links

Intel Network Processors

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Last modified: Tuesday, 07-Feb-2006 12:15:43 EST