High-Speed MARS Hardware

Abstract. High-speed MARS encryption/decryption hardware was developed using a 0.18μm IBM CMOS technology. In order to boost performance, a special adder and multiplier was designed by optimizing the adder block structure and interconnections between adder cells using signal delay profiles. A description of the hardware including block diagrams and data flow diagrams is presented. One of the most critical portions of the design is the special adder and multiplier. The design philosophy and tradeoffs used in these pieces are discussed. Finally, performance and size estimates are presented along with the rationale behind them. The design achieves 677Mbit/s data rate for encryption when using cipher block chaining and 1.28Gbit/s for decryption and other encryption modes in 13.8Kgates + 2.25Kbyte SRAM.