HW/SW co-design integrating high – speed authentication module for IPSec/IPv6

E.U. has set a special goal for 2010 which is the adoption, by at least 25%, of IPv6. IPv6 incorporates the usage of IPSec which provides cryptographic services to every data packet which is transmitted via Internet. This means that there is a major need for High Speed designs of IPSec protocol. It has been shown that the limiting factor of IPSec performance is the incorporated hash function. Hash functions, form a special family of cryptographic algorithms that satisfy current requirements for security, confidentiality and validity for several applications in technology. In this paper we propose a hardware design and implementation that increases throughput and frequency significantly and at the same time keeps the area small enough for the hash function RIPEMD- 160. This technique involves the application of partial unrolling and spatial pre-computation. The proposed technique leads to an implementation with 35% higher throughput than the conventional one.