Mitsubishi MISTY LSI

Nikkei English News, 24 September 1996. 
 
 
   Mitsubishi unveils Japan's fastest encryption chip  
 
 
   Mitsubishi Electric Corp. said it has developed an LSI 
   that can encrypt data at a speed of 450 megabits per 
   second, which is four times faster than any other 
   encryption chip developed in Japan and brings domestic 
   technology in line with DES, the U.S.-developed 
   encryption system that has become the standard in the 
   U.S. and Europe. 
 
   Because the chip performs the same as DES, Mitsubishi 
   will promote it as a domestic product for encryption 
   needs in Japan, with an eye on the growing market for 
   corporate intranets and high-speed data communications. 
   It said it will prepare for volume production during this 
   year. 
 
   The company fabricated the chip as a gate array using a 
   0.5 micron CMOS process and its own proprietary 
   encryption algorithm MISTY. Operating at a maximum 
   input/output speed of 40 megahertz, the chip can handle 
   32 bits per clock cycle. 
 
   [End]

John Young wrote:
|    Mitsubishi Electric Corp. said it has developed an LSI 
|    that can encrypt data at a speed of 450 megabits per 
|    second, which is four times faster than any other 
|    encryption chip developed in Japan and brings domestic 
|    technology in line with DES, the U.S.-developed 
|    encryption system that has become the standard in the 
|    U.S. and Europe. 

	Its worth noting that even if the chip is as fast as they
claim (quite possible), and if its highly key agile (less probable,
but not unlikely), it may not be feasable to build devices that work
at anything near that speed, due to bus issues, i/o barriers, etc.

	Also, in response to Bill Frantz's snake oil questions, we
need to wait a few years before using it.  Unfortunately, in the real
world, there are people installing point to point ATM links, who need
this speed today, and might choose to install as evesdropping
protection.  Weak crypto, acknowledged and understood as such, can be
better than plaintext.

	Strong crypto is obviously better, and I'll happily take
pointers to vendors of 100mb ethernet, fddi or >=155mb atm crypto
hardware thats available today.

Adam

-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume