Patent ID: 7124296

Claim:
A method for accelerating cryptographic processing of IP packets, the method comprising: pre-fetching a plurality of random-length IP packets from at least one remote memory; splitting at least a portion of the pre-fetched IP packets into a plurality of fixed-sized cells; storing the fixed-sized cells in at least one local memory; pre-fetching cryptographic context information indicative of processing to be applied to the fixed-sized cells from the at least one remote memory; storing the cryptographic context information in the at least one local memory; sequencing cryptographic processing of the stored fixed-sized cells through at least one cryptographic processing block in a pipelined fashion; processing, by the at least one cryptographic processing block, the sequenced fixed-sized cells using an encryption or decryption algorithm and an authentication algorithm in accordance with the stored cryptographic context information; and recombining the fixed-sized cells into a processed IP packet.