Compact modular exponentiation accelerator for modern FPGA devices

We present a compact FPGA implementation of a modular exponentiation accelerator suited for cryptographic applications. The implementation efficiently exploits the properties of modern FPGAs. The accelerator consumes 434 logic elements, four 9-bit DSP elements, and 13604 memory bits in Altera Stratix EP1S40. It performs modular exponentiations with up to 2250-bit integers and scales easily to larger exponentiations. Excluding pre- and post-processing time, 1024-bit and 2048-bit exponentiations are performed in 26.39 ms and 199.11 ms, respectively. Due to its compactness, standard interface, and support for different clock domains, the accelerator can effortlessly be integrated into a larger system in the same FPGA. The accelerator and its performance are demonstrated in practice with a fully functional prototype implementation consisting of software and hardware components.