Corrent Ships Security Chips

Seven months after unveiling its plans to design a high-speed network security architecture from the ground up, Corrent today announced the delivery of the industry’s highest performing gigabit-speed SSL processors. The first two products in Corrent’s Socket Armor family of processors are now available for sampling, with production parts available in the first quarter of 2002.

“While developing the Socket Armor product family, we focused on providing the security sector with a solution specifically designed for high speeds,” said Richard Takahashi, president and CEO of Corrent Corporation. “With no legacy architecture to drag us down, we were able to design a scalable solution based on industry standard protocols, interfaces and design methodology that protects Internet traffic without impacting overall network data rate performance.”

The CR7020 is a single-chip, full-duplex-gigabit security processor that accelerates e-commerce transactions using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) standards. It provides 5000 RSA decrypts per second (1024-bit modulus with CRT). The part can also be used in Virtual Private Network (VPN) applications using the Internet Protocol Security architecture (IPsec). The CR7020 provides system developers a single chip solution that supports current cryptographic standards with an easy transition path to the next-generation high-speed network infrastructure. The processor’s high-performance architecture supports AES, DES, 3DES and ARC4 encryption algorithms. Its on-chip modulo engine features Key BlasterTM public key acceleration technology for RSA, DSA, and Diffie-Hellman algorithms; its SmartHashTM technology runs HMAC-SHA-1, HMAC-MD5, SHA-1 and MD5. In designs running SSL/TLS and IPsec applications, the processor can handle both protocols simultaneously. The CR7020 has the industry’s best available performance in SSL/e-commerce applications as measured by both speed and by public key per second capabilities.

Corrent’s second new product, the CR7000, is a stand-alone modulo engine designed for use in VPN Internet Key Exchange operations or in protocol handshaking for SSL/TLS and digital signature computations. The part can be used alone or in conjunction with the CR7020. The CR7000 accelerates modulo functions for public key cryptography, providing 5000 RSA decrypts per second (1024-bit modulus with CRT). The CR7000 also makes use of Key Blaster Technology for accelerating public key encryption and digital signature computations and contains a 3-grade “True” digital randomizer.

“Corrent’s security solutions process packets at the speed of optical networks, making the burden associated with handling encryption ‘transparent’ to the systems,” said Bob Merritt, vice president, Semico Research Group. “This ‘network transparency’ equates to higher data throughput by offloading the system processor while maintaining optical data rates and gives the OEM system designer a ‘hand-off and forget’ security solution.”

Corrent’s Socket Armor family of products will be used in load balancers, content switches, and e-commerce servers to meet the demand of e-commerce web sites as more Internet traffic is secured. Until recently, all SSL encryption and public key exchange handshaking were done in software on a standard server, dragging performance to a crawl. Existing hardware accelerator solutions have provided some relief but continue to be the bottleneck to high-speed deployment of Internet security solutions. Corrent security processors enable e-commerce products to run securely at gigabit speeds and above.

Pricing for the CR7020 is $350 in quantities of 1000 and the CR7000 is $250 in quantities of 1000.

Corrent Corp.