Hi,
That's not really the point here, I was talking about lowest end
hardware compared to high end CPU. If we compare with high end hardware,
then we're talking about factor >50 faster than software.... There are
chips out that can do >1Gbit 3-DES, given a 64bit/66Mhz PCI bus.
I'm just starting with a low end chip to complement my 133 Mhz 486 based
net4501 board, with the goal of low cost and low power, not absolute
performance.
Soren
Mike Meyer wrote:
>
> Soren Kristensen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> types:
> > I'm not claiming any specific numbers, just that the chip I'm using, the
> > lowest end hi/fn 7951, is said to be faster than your typical highend
> > >1Ghz CPU doing 3-DES.
> [ ... ]
> > I'm only talking about this specific case of doing computing intensive
> > encryption.... As a hardware designer, I'm very well aware of all the
> > different bottlenecks.
>
> The crucial bottleneck for this kind of thing is the doubling
> time. Unless your special purpose hardware doubles in speed as fast or
> faster than general purpose CPUs, then eventually it's going to be
> slow, then expensive, and finally dead. Given the two doubling times
> and current relative speed, you can easily predict when general
> purpose CPUs well be faster and then when they will be more cost
> effective. At that point, your special purpose hardware is dead, and
> just waiting for the rest of the world to realize it.
>
> Given the predicted lifetime, you can make a rational decision about
> whether it's worth the effort to support the hardware.
>
> <mike
> --
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