Translating an hash function from software to hardware: a functional programming approach

Abstract

The use of concurrent functional languages in embedded systems offers advantages related to code size, simplicity and ease of maintenance. But, a performance decrease is also a normal side effect of the use of high level languages. This is aggravated in embedded reconfigurable systems with CPUs of limited performance, and to overcome this some of the computational tasks can be delegated to dedicated hardware, to improve the global performance of the systems. This paper describes the implementation of a cryptographic core, using the high level structure of the original software as a template for building the custom hardware, and the analysis of the possible methods of interconnection using a soft core based reconfigurable system.