Re: [Cryptix-users] API optimizations

[Ian G <ia...@sy...>]

Sameer Vijaykar wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am an undergraduate student at the Indian Institute of Technology, 
> Bombay in India. I have undertaken a course on Cryptography and Network
> security for which I am performing a survey of some cryptography APIs 
> from the point of view of their performance and the incorporated 
> optimizations. During the survey, I have found that almost all the 
> cryptography APIs perform significantly better than a textbook 
> implementation in either Java or C++. I want to further explore the way 
> in which the algorithms are optimized in order to get a better 
> understanding of the observed results. The emphasis here is on 
> optimizations in the algorithm itself as well as the implementation thereof.
> 
> Although the most API websites provide a great deal of information 
> regarding the usage of the API, I could not find satisfactory 
> information regarding the development of any API as such. Could someone 
> please point me towards any references in this regard. I would gladly 
> appreciate any help or suggestions.


I recall Peter Gutmann has written a paper on the design of APIs for 
crypto toolkits.  Have a look on his site or email him.  I don't think 
it goes into optimisation though.

That's really the area of hard-core cryptoplumbers like Eric Young ... I 
don't think people so much write about it as muck around with code 
constructs, run the speed tests, and see if it works.

iang

PS: for other posters, it looks like Cryptix is unmaintained for now. 
Most people use Bouncy Castle.