Well, I've done some comparison between gmp 1.3 and RSAREF (as distributed with RIPEM 1.07) on a RS6000/320

The key generation speeds turned out to be almost exactly the same using the "aixgcc/xlc mixed" version of RSAREF/RIPEM and gmp compiled entirely with IBM's xlc compiler.

(for those who haven't poked around in RIPEM, I'll say that this RS6000 version of RIPEM uses the "long long" data type to get 32 bit by 32 bit multiplications with 64 bit results quickly).

So, it wouldn't surprise me if some clever person could optimize gmp for the RS6000 and end up with something faster than what's provided in RIPEM 1.07.

In fact, after reading some code, I noticed the optimisations are in there, if one compiles with gcc (a few bytes of RS6k assembler makes a significant difference!). Anyway, the particular benchmark I'm playing with (key generation) is now about 20% faster with gmp than with the routines provided with RIPEM. Mark -- Mark Henderson markh@wimsey.bc.ca RIPEM key available by key server/finger/E-mail MD5OfPublicKey: F1F5F0C3984CBEAF3889ADAFA2437433