We propose a lightweight coprocessor for 16-bit microcontrollers that implements high security elliptic curve cryptography. It uses a 283-bit Koblitz curve and offers 140-bit security. Koblitz curves offer fast point multiplications if the scalars are given as specific τ -adic expansions, which results in a need for conversions between integers and τ -adic expansions. We propose the first light...

This paper proposes an out-of-order execution control scheme that can be effectively applied to a coprocessor for embedded systems. A floating-point coprocessor has generally multiple pipelines such as a floating-point adder, a floating-point multiplier, a floating-point divider and a load/store pipelines. In order to utilize fully these pipelines, a constraint-based dynamic control scheme is d...

A communication coprocessor that provides highbandwidth low-latency inter-node communication is a key component of multicomputer systems composed of hundreds of computing nodes interconnected by point-to-point links. For high reliability, interdependency between nodes is minimized by using a separate clock at each node. Thus, the coprocessor must handle asynchronous inputs with a very low proba...

In this paper, we present the design of an application-speci c coprocessor for algorithms that can be modeled as uniform recurrences or \uniformized" a ne recurrences. The coprocessor has a regular array of processors connected to an access-unit for intermediate storage of data. The distinguishing feature of our approach is that we assume the coprocessor to be interfaced to a standard, slow (si...

One of the pillars of trust-worthy computing is process isolation, the ability to keep process data private from other processes running on the same device. While embedded operating systems provide isolation for the software part of these processes, there is no commonly accepted isolation mechanism for the hardware resources. As a result, systems may remain vulnerable to hardware-based attacks....

This paper examines the viability of using integrated programmable logic as a coprocessor to support a host CPU core. This adaptive coprocessor is compared to a VLIW machine in term of both die area occupied and performance. The parametric bounds necessary to justify the adoption of an FPGA-based coprocessor are established. An abstract Field Programmable Gate Array model is used to investigate...

For most of the applications that make use of a vector coprocessor, its resources are not highly utilized due to the lack of sustained data parallelism, which often occurs due to insufficient vector parallelism or vector-length variations in dynamic environments. The motivation of our work stems from (a) the omnipresence of vector operations in high-performance scientific and emerging embedded ...

Elliptic Curve Cryptography implementations are known to be vulnerable to various side-channel attacks and fault injection attacks, and many countermeasures have been proposed. However, selecting and integrating a set of countermeasures targeting multiple attacks into an ECC design is far from trivial. Security, performance and cost need to be considered together. In this paper, we describe a g...

Many researchers believe electronic wallets (secure storage devices that maintain account balances) are the solution to electronic commerce challenges. This paper argues for a more powerful model — a secure coprocessor — that can run a small operating system, run application programs, and also keep secure storage for cryptographic keys and balance information. We have built a system called Dyad...