Pushing the limits further: Sub-atomic {AES}

While throughput has for a long time been the main focus of optimisation, the need for compact and lightweight implementations of cryptographic primitives is on the rise again. Along with development of new tailored primitives and standards, the search for small implementations of the Advanced Encryption Standard has gained momentum again. This culminated in the recent publication of the {AtomicAES} architecture by Banik et al., who reported a design size of just over 2000 {GE}. In this work we design a new 8-bit serial architecture from scratch that enables us to push the area requirement for a fully featured {AES} primitive further down by more than 10% of the theoretical gap left by {AtomicAES} for optimisation. Moreover our architecture provides full functionality for encryption and decryption including keyschedule.     «

While throughput has for a long time been the main focus of optimisation, the need for compact and lightweight implementations of cryptographic primitives is on the rise again. Along with development of new tailored primitives and standards, the search for small implementations of the Advanced Encryption Standard has gained momentum again. This culminated in the recent publication of the {AtomicAES} architecture by Banik et al., who reported a design size of just over 2000 {GE}. In this work we...     »