International Business Machines Corporation

Siegfried K H Sutter

Camil Fayad

John K Li

Phil C Yeh

Tamas Visegrady

Thomas J Dewkett

A cryptographic engine for modulo N multiplication, which is structured as a plurality of almost identical, serially connected Processing Elements, is controlled so as to accept input in blocks that are smaller than the maximum capability of the engine in terms of bits multiplied at one time. The serially connected hardware is thus partitioned on the fly to process a variety of cryptographic key sizes while still maintaining all of the hardware in an active processing state.

Selectively isolating processor elements into subsets of processor elements

A data processing system, which is particularly useful for carrying out modular multiplication, especially for cryptographic purposes, comprises a plurality of independent, serially connected processing elements which are provided with data in a cyclical fashion via a control mechanism that is capable of transferring data from a set of registers to earlier ones in the series of the serially connected processing elements, at the end of a predetermined number of cycles.

Forward shifting of processor element processing for load balancing

In an array of groups of cryptographic processors, the processors in each group operate together but are securely connected through an external shared memory. The processors in each group include cryptographic engines capable of operating in a pipelined fashion. Instructions in the form of request blocks are supplied to the array in a balanced fashion to assure that the processors are occupied processing instructions.

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Elsendorf, Germany

Siegfried K H Sutter