DSPs

[Phil Karn]

>This is somewhat different than the kind of fast multiplication you are
>looking for.

Yes, but even scalar multiplication is so much faster on a DSP than on
most general purpose CPUs that it seems like a definite win. The 486
takes from 13-42 clock cycles to perform a multiply, depending on the
operand sizes and number of significant bits in the multiplier. Even
if you couldn't keep the pipeline full on a chip like the PowerPC, you'd
still be well ahead.

But then I hear people say that it's not the multiplication that slows
down modular exponentiation, it's the modular reduction.

Phil