ECDH/ECDSA: NIST Curves

Xiphera’s compact IP cores implement ECDH and ECDSA on NIST prime curves, and the high-speed ECC Accelerator reaches over thousand operations per second.

About the product

Xiphera offers a variety of high-speed and compact Intellectual Property (IP) cores implementing Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) and Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) on NIST prime curves. ECDH and ECDSA on NIST prime curves are widely used in various cryptographic protocols and systems. Our current offering for NIST curves consists of: 

  1. ECC Accelerator, high-speed variant (XIP4200H)
  2. NIST P-256/P-384 ECDH+ECDSA, compact variant (XIP41X3C)
The high-speed ECC Accelerator reaches to more than a thousand operations per second in a modern FPGA or ASIC. Furthermore, it covers all NIST P curves with a single IP core instance and also allows the use of user-specified elliptic curves. Both the above IP cores have been designed for easy integration with FPGA- and ASIC-based designs in a vendor-agnostic design methodology, and their functionalities does not rely on any FPGA manufacturer-specific features. Additionally, both of our compact NIST Curves IP cores have obtained the CAVP validation.
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Key features

  1. Minimal resource requirements: Compact cores for ECDH/ECDSA curves (XIP41x3C) require only a small portion of the FPGA’s resources. More specific information about the resource needs for various FPGAs can be found in the product brief.
  2. High-speed: ECC Accelerator (XIP4200H) can perform more than a thousand operations per second in a modern FPGA or ASIC.
  3. Secure architecture: The execution times of Xiphera’s IP cores for NIST Curves and ECC Accelerator are independent of the secret values and, consequently, provide full protection against timing-based side-channel attacks. Additionally, the pattern of operations during computations is independent of the secrets. 
  4. Standard compliance: The compact cores for ECDH/ECDSA curves are compliant with FIPS 186-5 and SP 800-56A. This IP core can be used as a part of numerous public-key systems and protocols including IKEv2 and TLS 1.3 (RFC 8446).
  5. CAVP validation: The compact cores for ECDH/ECDSA curves (XIP41x3C) have received the CAVP validation from the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
  6. Easy integration: Xiphera’s IP cores for ECDH/ECDSA curves and ECC Accelerator support easy integration to various systems.
Internal high-level block diagram of Xiphera's high-speed ECC Accelerator IP core (XIP4200H).
Internal high-level block diagram of Xiphera's high-speed ECC Accelerator IP core

For more details, including FPGA resources & peak performance as well as ordering instructions, open the full product briefs in PDF. Contact us here, and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

NIST P-256/384 ECDH & ECDSA, compact
ECC Accelerator, high-speed

Interested to learn more about the technical details and performance numbers for ASIC application? Register for the ASIC-specific product brief for the Compact NIST Curves here.

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Partner collaborations

We are proud partners with leading global as well as innovative growing FPGA companies. We offer a selection of our cryptographic IP cores for our technology partners. Visit our partner pages to learn more about our ECDH & ECDSA curves and ECC Accelerator offering for our partners.

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