Abstract
We present a high-performance Elliptic Curve Cryptographic (ECC) processor that supports arbitrary prime field and curve parameters. A novel pipeline architecture of the Montgomery multiplication by using the inherent DSP blocks in modern FPGAs is proposed to speed up the point scalar multiplication. In addition, the improved operation scheduling is presented to optimize the operation cycles further. With Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA devices, a 256-bit point scalar multiplication can be performed in 0.86 ms at 263 MHz, about 3.14 to 11.27 times faster than other designs with comparable functionalities. Our processor therefore outperforms others significantly in terms of throughput, area, and cost-effectiveness.