Securing the IoT with lightning fast IP core

One of the major issues in today’s networked world is securing the connections across unsecure open networks to smart systems. A widely used principle to establish such secure communication channels is public-key cryptography. Part of its library of IP blocks for cryptography, Barco Silex’s new IP block can implement public-key cryptography in hardware, as part of a security coprocessor to the application’s ASIC or FPGA.

The new solution is well suited for the IoT market where secure, fast and dependable connections are crucial. Examples are car-to-x communication, wireless connections to e.g. wearable (medical) devices, payment solutions, industrial applications, hardware security modules and TLS/SSL connections.

In these applications, Barco Silex’s core can form the fundament of secure, trusted and fast applications. Thanks to its scalability and flexibility, it allows for optimal solutions for a wide variety of requirements, applications and markets. It can be scaled to offer the best mix of area/performance/power possible, including solutions for systems that require a very low gate count or an extremely high performance. And it includes a wide range of algorithms and solutions such as RSA, ECC with NIST/other curves (Brainpool, Apple Home Kit) and other protocols.

Sébastien Rabou, Product Manager at Barco Silex, commented: “Our engineers went to great lengths to make this core one of the best solutions available on the market. Not only is it lighting fast, but we also solved some of the issues that other solutions may suffer from. Ours will offload the cryptographic operations from a processor for a full 100%, freeing your application to do what it was designed for. And to ensure a fast time to market, we have added a unique software wrapper for easy install and configuration. Adding and using a hardware crypto processor has now become as easy as adding a software library and calling its functions.”