[Botan-announce] Botan 1.2.6

[Jack L. <ll...@ac...>]

Hi,

I have released Botan 1.2.6 today, mostly just removing some useless or
poorly designed interfaces. However, there is one nice new feature which is
available; the mp_asm64 module, which lets BigInt use 64-bit words on any
system that supports a 64x64->128 bit multiply. Using it on native 64-bit
machines results in some very impressive performance increases (details
below).

The module should work with GCC on Alpha, IA-64, x86-64, MIPS-64, and
PPC-64, though I have only tested it on Alpha and IA-64 so far. It may also
work on other compilers for those systems which support GCC's inline asm
syntax, though I haven't tried it. If possible, please test this on any
64-bit systems you have access to, and let me know how well it works (if at
all). The only system-dependent code is a line or two for each system in
the module's mp_impl.h file, so any problems should be easy to find and
fix. Any contributions to let this work on other 64-bit systems (zSeries,
SPARCv9, SH5, HPPA-64, MMIX, etc) will be most welcome.

On an EV67 Alpha with GCC 2.96, the speed increase for RSA and DH ranges
from 40% for 512-bit keys to over 350% (!) for 4096-bit keys. DSA sees a
similar speedup, though since generally DSA keys are limited to 1024 bits,
DSA will tend to be only twice as fast with this module. On an Itanium 2
with GCC 3.2.2, the speedup was less dramatic, though still pretty good -
20% to 150% for RSA and DH (512-4096 bit keys), and 20% to 80% for DSA
(512-1024 bit keys).

Lastly... well, I feel pretty stupid to bring this up here, but I'm looking
for a job. If anyone on this list (or their company) is looking for someone
to do security-related work (design, development, audit, or penetration
testing), please consider me for the job (contact me offlist if
interested).

FYI, I will be offline until next Monday, July 7, so don't expect any
responses to email until then. Have a good holiday weekend (for those in
the US), and a good weekend in general (for everyone else),
 -Jack