The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Aug. 16, 2011
Filed:
Jan. 08, 2007
Mark Buer, Gilbert, AZ (US);
Patrick Y. Law, Milpitas, CA (US);
Zheng Qi, Milpitas, CA (US);
Broadcom Corporation, Irvine, CA (US);
Abstract
Provided is an architecture (hardware implementation) for an authentication engine to increase the speed at which multi-loop and/or multi-round authentication algorithms may be performed on data packets transmitted over a computer network. Authentication engines in accordance with the present invention apply a variety of techniques that may include, in various applications, collapsing two multi-round authentication algorithm (e.g., SHA1 or MD5 or variants) processing rounds into one; reducing operational overhead by scheduling the additions required by a multi-round authentication algorithm in such a matter as to reduce the overall critical timing path ('hiding the ads'); and, for a multi-loop (e.g., HMAC) variant of a multi-round authentication algorithm, pipelining the inner and outer loops. In one particular example of applying the invention in an authentication engine using the HMAC-SHA1 algorithm of the IPSec protocol, collapsing of the conventional 80 SHA1 rounds into 40 rounds, hiding the ads, and pipelining the inner and outer loops allows HMAC-SHA1 to be conducted in approximately the same time as conventional SHA1.