🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1992Apr15.014849.16768@cs.cornell.edu>, wayner@cs.cornell.edu (Peter
Wayner)
writes:

> Does anyone have any good information on the various hardware
> implementation of DES chips that are floating around on the market?
> I'm curious about the price and speed for the usual reasons. 

I built some stuff using a chip from Cryptech in Brussels which I can't
recommend too highly. It is a DES chip embedded in a microprocessor with
a command set which lets you do all major modes (ECB, CBC and CFB) with
single or double keys and pipelining, off a bus of 8, 16 or 32 bits, with
a throughput of typically 6Mbit/sec.

About the only instruction they don't have is `increment key by 1, encrypt
register X and compare with register Y' (guess why?). Anyway they used to
be on +322 725 4770. The sales guy I dealt with has left now so you'd have 
to ask around from someone to talk to. Their chief scientist is (was?) 
Frank Hoornaert who gave a paper on this chip at Eurocrypt 87.

This is now, as far as I know, the only non-US manufacturer of fast DES 
chips (anyone can make a slow DES chip from a microcontroller). The other,
now discontinued, manufacturer was Robotron of East Germany, who delivered
large quantities of DES chips to the Soviet armed forces (supposedly for
incorporation in the hard disk controllers of PC-XT cloneskies).

Ross