An FPGA Implementation of GF(p) Elliptic Curve Cryptographic Coprocessor

A GF(p) elliptic curve cryptographic coprocessor is proposed and implemented on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The focus of the coprocessor is on the most critical, complicated and time-consuming point multiplications. The technique of coordinates conversion and fast multiplication algorithm of two large integers are utilized to avoid frequent inversions and to accelerate the field multiplications used in point multiplications. The characteristic of hardware parallelism is considered in the implementation of point multiplications. The coprocessor implemented on XILINX XC2V3000 computes a point multiplication for an arbitrary point on a curve defined over GF(2 192-2 64-1) with the frequency of 10 MHz in 4.40 ms in the average case and 5.74 ms in the worst case. At the same circumstance, the coprocessor implemented on XILINX XC2V4000 takes 2.2 ms in the average case and 2.88 ms in the worst case.