Overview
More and more applications today demand higher and higher data rates, and
Helion believe that despite the technical challenges, it should not be the
encryption processing which limits your performance. For this reason,
Helion have developed a range of four AES core families each offering a different
speed/area balance which together cover any throughput requirement up to more
than 40Gbps; this way you can choose the most optimal fit for your particular
requirement. In this section we look at the Fast AES core family.
Helion Fast AES Solutions
The Helion Fast AES core family is one of our higher-rate solutions, aimed at applications
which require a few Gigabits per second throughput, combined with low latency.
This core is perfect for many applications, for example high speed networking,
multi-channel video encryption, or securing data storage. The result is a core with
high throughput capabilities yet moderate logic area, spanning all ASIC and FPGA technologies.
The Fast AES family forms a very powerful and flexible platform. It has been designed
in modular form and is supplied as a series of powerful, re-usable building blocks.
This way, you can build up all kinds of interesting solutions where resources can be
shared or replicated according to your exact requirements. The Fast family offers
full AES encryption and decryption using any combination of the three AES key sizes
(128-, 192-, and 256-bits). It can be used to implement any of the common block cipher
modes as well as the more recent complex modes (take a look at our
AES modes pages for more information). The table below outlines the kind of area
and performance achievable using the Fast AES core.
Measured Area and Performance
128-bit keysize ECB Encryption including hardware key expansion
| TARGET |
MAX THROUGHPUT |
AREA |
ASIC
(0.13um CMOS) |
>3 Gbps |
<27k gates
(no RAM required) |
Actel FPGA
(ProASIC3 -2) |
>1.1 Gbps |
2003 tiles
10 RAMs |
Altera FPGA
(Cyclone 2 -6) |
>1.6 Gbps |
891 LEs
10 M4K RAMs |
Altera FPGA
(Stratix 2 -3) |
>2.6 Gbps |
610 ALUTs
10 M4K RAMs |
Xilinx FPGA
(Spartan 3 -5) |
>1.5 Gbps |
393 slices
10 BlockRAMs |
Xilinx FPGA
(Virtex 4 -11) |
>2.6 Gbps |
393 slices
10 BlockRAMs |
Xilinx FPGA
(Virtex 5 -3) |
>4.0 Gbps |
349 slices
0 BlockRAMs |
If the performance of the Helion Fast AES core does not match your needs, try looking at our
Giga AES cores if you need to go faster, or our Standard AES cores if you are able
to run at a lower rate.
Datasheets
For full details of the Helion Fast AES cores, please download the datasheet appropriate to your target technology.
Click here for the ASIC core data sheet (PDF format)
Click here for the Actel FPGA core data sheet (PDF format)
Click here for the Altera FPGA core data sheet (PDF format)
Click here for the Xilinx FPGA core data sheet (PDF format)
Whitepapers
Click here for an easy to read overview on AES in hardware (PDF format)
Contact
For more detailed information on this or any of our other products and services,
please feel free to email us at
helioncores@heliontech.com and we will be pleased to discuss how we can assist
with your individual requirements.
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