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+aes
+======
+
+Verilog implementation of the symmetric block cipher AES (Advanced
+Encryption Standard) as specified in the NIST document [FIPS 197](http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/fips/fips197/fips-197.pdf).
+
+
+## Introduction ##
+
+This implementation supports 128 and 256 bit keys. The
+implementation is iterative and process one 128 block at a time. Blocks
+are processed on a word level with 4 S-boxes in the data path. The
+S-boxes for encryption are shared with the key expansion and the core
+can thus not do key update in parallel with block processing.
+
+The encipher and decipher block processing datapaths are separated and
+basically self contained given access to a set of round keys and a
+block. This makes it possible to hard wire either encipher or decipher
+and allow the build tools to optimize away the other functionality which
+will reduce the size to about 50%. For cipher modes such as CTR, GCM
+decryption in the AES core will never be used and thus the decipher
+block processing can be removed.
+
+This is a fairly compact implementation. Further reduction could be
+achived by just having a single S-box. Similarly the performane can be
+increased by having 8 or even 16 S-boxes which would reduce the number
+of cycles to two cycles for each round.
+
+
+## Implementation results ##
+The core has been implemented in Altera and Xilinx FPGA devices.
+
+### Altera Cyclone IV GX ###
+- 7497 LEs
+- 2994 Regs
+- 96 MHz fmax
+- 5 cycles/round
+
+This means that we can do just about 2 Mblocks/s or 256 Mbps
+performance.
+
+Removing the decipher module yields:
+- 5497 LEs
+- 2855 Regs
+- 106 MHz fmax
+- 5 cycles/round
+
+
+### Xilinx Spartan6LX-3 ###
+- 2576 slices
+- 3000 regs
+- 100 MHz
+- 5 cycles/round