Elliptic Technologies Debuts Hardware Security Module

The SPAcc-HSM provides specialized access control to management and application processors.

Security IP and software provider Elliptic Technologies announced the availability of its programmable and configurable security accelerator and Hardware Security Module, SPAcc-HSM. The security engine is designed to provide protection for sensitive data and transactions and can be shared simultaneously with an application processor that requires lower levels of security.

The SPAcc-HSM provides specialized access control to management and application processors and helps ensure that the security boundaries between the two domains are enforced. The sharing of cryptographic resources between the two processors allows for significant gate count reduction and smaller memory footprint, the company said, and noted digital rights management (DRM) and content protection standards, such as Digital Transmission Content Protection (DTCP), require robust security schemes to protect sensitive key information from nonauthorized use.

"For many systems and SoCs, it is very important to protect and differentiate secure transactions such as key management from other transactions." said Vijay Dube, president and CEO of Elliptic Technologies. "Our main goal with the security protocol accelerator SPAcc-HSM is to offer our customers the ability to share a single proven, cost and power-efficient engine between processors with different levels of security."

The SPAcc-HSM can be preconfigured to match the system requirements and has two traffic separation paradigms: shared mode, to allow for a more flexible context allocation during run-time; and virtual mode, to significantly simplify the software implementation side, but with context resources fixed between security domains.

To meet the needs of multiple security applications such as 3GPP/LTE-Advanced, IPsec, WiMax, SRTP, MACsec and storage, the SPAcc-HSM offers support for all required cipher and message authentication algorithms. This allows designers to integrate security functions tuned for the specific applications the SoCs are targeted at, Dube said.

Earlier this year the company released the HDCP 2.0 Software Development Kit. HDCP 2.0 is a security technology that addresses the content protection needs for high-valued digital content. The SDK is a fully portable architecture that can be used on most platforms and operating systems, including Google Android-based devices. Elliptic's HDCP 2.0 solution is based on the latest specification HDCP IIA Revision 2.0, and it supports all mandatory elements of copy protection, including authentication and key exchange, content encryption and system renewability.

The HDCP 2.0 SDK from Elliptic is a content protection solution for digital audio/video entertainment content in the wireless and wireline home network environment. The solution is targeted at OEMs and embedded system and device manufacturers, and can be integrated into embedded components for use in tablets, media centers, DVDs, HDTVs, set-top boxes, game consoles, streaming controllers, laptops and other consumer electronic products.