Comprehensive Efficient Implementations of ECC on C54xx Family of Low-cost Digital Signal Processors

TL;DR

This paper presents efficient implementations of 160-bit GF(p) elliptic curve cryptography on low-cost TMS54xx DSPs, achieving the fastest scalar multiplication times with optimized techniques like windowed recoding and loop unrolling.

Contribution

It introduces comprehensive ECC implementations on fixed-point DSPs, including windowed recoding, achieving record low execution times for resource-constrained devices.

Findings

Complete scalar multiplication within 50 ms

Windowed recoding reduces time to 25 ms

Achieves best known results for low-power DSPs

Abstract

Resource constraints in smart devices demand an efficient cryptosystem that allows for low power and memory consumption. This has led to popularity of comparatively efficient Elliptic curve cryptog-raphy (ECC). Prior to this paper, much of ECC is implemented on re-configurable hardware i.e. FPGAs, which are costly and unfavorable as low-cost solutions. We present comprehensive yet efficient implementations of ECC on fixed-point TMS54xx series of digital signal processors (DSP). 160-bit prime field GF(p) ECC is implemented over a wide range of coordinate choices. This paper also implements windowed recoding technique to provide better execution times. Stalls in the programming are mini-mized by utilization of loop unrolling and by avoiding data dependence. Complete scalar multiplication is achieved within 50 msec in coordinate implementations, which is further reduced till 25 msec for windowed-recoding method. These are the best known results for fixed-point low power digital signal processor to date.