A Programmable Hardware Cellular Automaton : Example of Data Flow Transformation

We present an IP-core called PHCA which stands for programmable hardware cellular automaton. PHCA is a hardware implementation of a general purpose cellular automaton (CA) entirely programmable. The heart of this structure is a PE array with reconfigurable side links allowing the implementation of a 2D CA or a 1D CA. As an illustration of a PHCA program, we present the implementation of a symmetric cryptography algorithm called ISEA for Ising spin encryption algorithm. Indeed ISEA is based on a 2D Ising spin lattice presenting random series of disordered spin configurations. The main idea of ISEA is to use this disorder to encrypt data. Efficiency of ISEA and PHCA implementation results are given.