Pre-calculated Encryption Keys for Low-Latency Hardware Communication
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Solution Overview
Problem
Computing systems face challenges in maintaining high performance and security as they operate in diverse and increasingly complex environments, making them vulnerable to malicious communication from various sources, which threatens their scalability and deployment.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a low-latency and encrypted hardware layer communication method using a communication bridge with pre-calculated encryption keys stored in an encryption key memory, allowing for fast encryption and decryption operations without significant latency delays, compatible with protocols like PCIe and CXL.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If encryption key calculation is performed in real-time during data transmission, then security is improved, but communication latency increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent pre-calculates and stores encryption keys in a lookup table before data transmission occurs. During actual communication, the system simply retrieves the pre-computed key from memory rather than calculating it in real-time, thereby maintaining security while eliminating the time penalty of key generation during critical data path operations
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts the computationally intensive key calculation operation from the critical data transmission path and places it in a separate pre-processing phase. The key generation is performed offline and stored, separating the security-critical key material preparation from the time-sensitive data encryption operation
2Productivity
If encryption operations are implemented in hardware, then security and speed are improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the encryption system into distinct functional components: a key management unit that handles pre-computation and storage of encryption keys, and a data encryption unit that performs the actual XOR operations. This modular segmentation allows each component to be optimized independently while maintaining overall system efficiency
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary lookup table structure that mediates between the key generation process and the encryption operation. This intermediary component stores pre-computed keys and provides them to the encryption unit, simplifying the overall hardware architecture by eliminating the need for complex real-time key generation circuits in the critical data path
Data Source
AI summary
A method of low-latency and encrypted hardware layer communication includes calculating, by an encryption circuit of a communication bridge controller, a pre-calculated encryption keys corresponding to a block encryptor of the encryption circuit, each block encryptor configured to use a corresponding pre-calculated encryption key to encrypt a corresponding unencrypted data block of a data transmission having one or more unencrypted data blocks, storing the one or more pre-calculated encryption keys in an encryption key memory associated with the communication bridge, for each unecrypted data block, encrypting the unencrypted data block using the corresponding pre-calculated encryption key to generate an encrypted data block and an authentication code block for the unencrypted data block, aggregating one or more encrypted data blocks into an encrypted data transmission, and generating an authenticated code corresponding to the encrypted data transmission based upon each of the authentication code blocks of each of the encrypted data blocks.