Patent ID: 7197527

Claim:
An apparatus for carrying out computations involving field elements of an odd-characteristic finite field GF(p k ), the apparatus comprising: a memory; and a processing unit coupled to the memory comprising a w-bit arithmetic logic unit (ALU) and at least two binary w-bit registers, wherein the processing unit is configured to: store binary data representing any two field elements of an odd-characteristic finite field GF(p k ) in a first w-bit binary register and a second w-bit binary register, p being an odd prime number, the field elements comprising k coefficients in accordance with a polynomial-basis representation, the binary data comprising plural groups of data bits, wherein each group of data bits represents an associated one of the k coefficients, and execute a fixed number of w-bit ALU operations, each operation operating on the entire contents of the first and second w-bit registers; thereby producing the result of a finite field operation.