Freescale Expands DC Focus With C29x Crypto Coprocessors

Underscoring its continued focus on the fast-growing datacentre market, Freescale Semiconductor introduces the C29x family of crypto coprocessors – a new lineup of security accelerators engineered to help global datacentre equipment manufacturers efficiently scale to handle dramatic increases in secure network traffic.

The new C29x crypto coprocessors enable multi-chip, single PCI-E card solutions providing more than 120K RSA 2048 operations/second and delivering more than 3x the performance of more expensive PCI-E options currently available from today’s market share leader.

“Internet traffic security requirements are increasingly stringent and complex, yet the security coprocessor market is currently served by very few vendors. Customers are asking us for high-performance, cost- and power-efficient choices for coprocessors,” said Tareq Bustami, Vice President of Product Management for Freescale’s Digital Networking group. “Freescale has leveraged its communications processor leadership and 30 years of embedded security R&D investment to develop the new C29x crypto coprocessors, which offer the security and scalability datacentres need to handle tremendous increases in data volume.”

Worldwide mobile data traffic is expected to increase 18-fold during the next five years (source: Cisco Visual Networking Index Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast, 2011 to 2016), as network security requirements increase 5x due to National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recommendations to move from RSA1048 bit to RSA2048 bit encryption. Scalable security coprocessors are expected to play a pivotal role for a range of applications, including datacentre/cloud computing, as well as security appliances and hardware security modules used in banking, government and defence equipment.

“Freescale’s new C29x crypto coprocessor family provides OEMs with more choices and significantly lower costs at a time when network security has never been more important,” said Joseph Byrne, Senior Analyst with the Linley Group. “The security coprocessor space is a potentially high-margin market for Freescale’s Digital Networking business.”

Freescale’s C29x family offers scalability in both power and performance. The family is designed to accelerate RSA (up to 4k key sizes), Diffie Hellman, and Elliptical Curve Cryptography (ECC) algorithms, and integrates up to 10 Gbs of bulk encryption. Whether applied in a large datacentre blade or within a hardware security module, C29x crypto coprocessors consume minimal power for thermally constrained designs. The products can be used in single- or multi- chip PCI-E end point card configurations, or can operate as standalone processors.

“Ensuring the security of enormous volumes of IP traffic is one of the most pressing issues facing our industry today,” said Darren Learmonth, Chief Technology Officer, Thales e-Security. “Freescale’s C29x successfully addresses this issue with an extremely flexible, cost-efficient solution which should prove quite compelling to the marketplace.”