[138] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: RC5-12/32/5 contest solved
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Eric Blossom)
Mon Feb 3 22:04:47 1997
Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 13:35:34 -0800
From: Eric Blossom <eb@comsec.com>
To: PADGETT@hobbes.orl.mmc.com
Cc: jimbell@pacifier.com, cryptography@c2.net, cypherpunks@toad.com
In-Reply-To: <199701302229.OAA19293@toad.com> (PADGETT@hobbes.orl.mmc.com)
A. Padgett Peterson P.E. Information Security apparently wrote:
> Have good reason to believe your estimate for a purpose built machine this
> year (expect 600,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 kps per sieve - these will not
> be cheap chips but will be commecially available). Expect 400 arrays
> would be required to do DES in a day (average) but is a lot more
> achievable than the 65k postulated by the gang of nine.
I received a nice flyer in the mail the other day from "Chip Express"
(www.chipexpress.com, 800-95-CHIPX). They are offering Laser
Programmed Gate Arrays. It appears to be a reasonable way to get some
Wiener chips built. As I recall, the Wiener design required about
23,000 gates. Their blurb had the following table in in:
FPGA Gates ASIC Gates 500 Units 1000 Units 5000 Units
40,000 20,000 $77 $45 $10
Not Avail 200,000 $176 $150 $82
So it appears that you can get 5000 Wiener key search chips build for
about $50K. I'm not sure about the speed, but I wouldn't be surprised
if you could clock these at 50 MHz. The Wiener design is pipelined
and searches one key per clock, so each chip could search 50e6 keys /
second. 50e6 * 5000 = 250e9 keys / second for $50K
Happy Hunting...
Eric
