From: ""L. Detweiler"" <ld231782@longs.lance.colostate.edu>
Date: Tue, 25 May 93 20:23:03 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: RSA in CMOS?
Message-ID: <9305260322.AA26830@longs.lance.colostate.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Many people have been talking about cryptographic applications in
hardware on the list.  I suspect these will be largely untapped until a
chip that does general-purpose RSA encryption comes along. There are
many DES implementations that could be integrated with such a chip and
then worked into computer cards, telephones, cryptography kits, etc. 
Does anyone know of the existence of an RSA chip? To the best of my
knowledge they do not exist. Are there any plans for an RSA chip? The
chip would ideally *not* be constrained to work with DES, or at least
the DES encryption would be an option in addition to just pure RSA
encryption of arbitrary data, for reasons of potential insecurity in
DES and emergence of other superior algorithms (which upon appearance
would not automatically make a general-purpose chip obsolete).