Re: Java Source For Asymmetric Key Ciphers

"Tom St Denis" <tomstdenis@gmail.com> writes:
> About 1 or 2 mm^2 in 130nm technology.
>
> 10 years from now in 65 or 45nm [when it becomes common for the fabs]
> this will be moot.

How can you say it will be moot? What smart cards are made in 130nm
today? Why would anyone use a 130nm process if they can use 3 microns
for much less cost?

> But you missed the point. Custom RISC processors will likely be
> available to the public [e.g. LGPL or similar license] and it won't
> make sense to use the free DW51 when a free RISC core is available that
> lets you do so much more.

Sure, there will be high end applications that need a 32 bit card but
the most common applications will still be stuff like SIM phone cards,
that just hold a few account numbers and keys. Right now I doubt most
of them can even do public key operations. Public key may become
economically feasible sometime, but remember these things are made by
the billions, so they'll still want to use 8-bit cards if they can.
The difference between a 27 cent, 8-bit card and a 28 cent, 32-bit
card is megabucks in the bank.

> They also compromise. Why use P-256 it's slow on my 16-bit MCU...
> let's use P-160 or lower! it'll be fast enough!

I think they're using closer to p-120. Since they're also using
single-DES....
Received on Thu Jan 19 03:44:30 2006