Hardware Software Tri-Design of Encryption for Mobile Communication Units
[appeared at International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and 
				 Signal Processing, Seattle, May 1998]
by Oskar Mencer, Martin Morf, Michael J. Flynn

abstract.
We explore the design space of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs),
Processors and ASICs -- Hardware-Software Tri-design -- in the framework
of encryption for hand-held communication units.

IDEA (International Data Encryption Algorithm) is used to show the
tradeoffs for the suggested technologies. The measures for comparing
different options are: Performance, Programmability and Power
(P^3). More specifically we use the Performance to Power, 
or Operations to Energy ratio MOPS/Watt and Mbits/s/Watt to compare 
processors, FPGAs and ASICs.

We compare the latest Digital Signal Processor (DSP) from Texas
Instruments to Xilinx XC4000 series FPGAs. Many DSP-like applications
perform very well on FPGAs. We show the benefits and limitations of
FPGA technology for IDEA.