Mitsubishi MISTY LSI
Nikkei English News, 24 September 1996. Mitsubishi unveils Japan's fastest encryption chip Mitsubishi Electric Corp. said it has developed an LSI that can encrypt data at a speed of 450 megabits per second, which is four times faster than any other encryption chip developed in Japan and brings domestic technology in line with DES, the U.S.-developed encryption system that has become the standard in the U.S. and Europe. Because the chip performs the same as DES, Mitsubishi will promote it as a domestic product for encryption needs in Japan, with an eye on the growing market for corporate intranets and high-speed data communications. It said it will prepare for volume production during this year. The company fabricated the chip as a gate array using a 0.5 micron CMOS process and its own proprietary encryption algorithm MISTY. Operating at a maximum input/output speed of 40 megahertz, the chip can handle 32 bits per clock cycle. [End]
John Young wrote: | Mitsubishi Electric Corp. said it has developed an LSI | that can encrypt data at a speed of 450 megabits per | second, which is four times faster than any other | encryption chip developed in Japan and brings domestic | technology in line with DES, the U.S.-developed | encryption system that has become the standard in the | U.S. and Europe. Its worth noting that even if the chip is as fast as they claim (quite possible), and if its highly key agile (less probable, but not unlikely), it may not be feasable to build devices that work at anything near that speed, due to bus issues, i/o barriers, etc. Also, in response to Bill Frantz's snake oil questions, we need to wait a few years before using it. Unfortunately, in the real world, there are people installing point to point ATM links, who need this speed today, and might choose to install as evesdropping protection. Weak crypto, acknowledged and understood as such, can be better than plaintext. Strong crypto is obviously better, and I'll happily take pointers to vendors of 100mb ethernet, fddi or >=155mb atm crypto hardware thats available today. Adam -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume
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Adam Shostack -
jya＠pipeline.com