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Mike Bristow · July 15th 08, 12:47 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article ,
wrote:
So what do you think will be running the encryption processor? I don't
know what a circuit hardwired to do something like 3DES or Blowfish or
whatever encryption Oyster uses would look like, but I suspect it
would be a nightmare to design and debug if it were even possible.

Hardware crypto accelerators have been around for ages and ages and
ages. I remember in the late '90s seeing one that hooked up to the
SCSI bus - it was aimed at the web server market.

These days there are off-the-shelf x86 compatible CPUs that can do
it (at least for AES, anyway).

I don't know if they'd count as 'hardwared' mind you - I would
expect them to consist of odd specialized hardware coupled with a
general purpose CPU and to split the workload between them.

--
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-- Flash