Re: LibTomMath vs MIRACL

From: Paul Rubin (//phr.cx_at_NOSPAM.invalid)
Date: 07/29/03 

Date: 29 Jul 2003 12:24:18 -0700

"George Joseph" <george.joseph@student.up.ac.za> writes:
> I would like to know which (Implemented in ANSI C)Cryptographic libraries
> would compare better speed-wise to MIRACL? Especially in their
> implementations for Public-key cryptosystems.
>
> MIRACL however is very easy-to-use library with a good manual. How does
> LibTomMath library compare to MIRACL speed-wise? LibTomMath is better than
> MIRACL as it has commented all their functions to allow the programmer to
> understand what they implemented. Has there been any tests conducted on
> number of bits between these two libraries?

MIRACL has very well-tuned assembly code for a number of platforms and
beats the pants off any possible ANSI C implementation for those
platforms. MIRACL's C implementations are for portability and aren't
all that fast and I don't know if anyone has even bothered
benchmarking them. They're a way to get the library working quickly
on a new platform. LTM's C code is probably faster than MIRACL's C
code. But if performance is important the next step with MIRACL is to
get assembly code running on your platform.

MIRACL has more fancy math functions available than LTM does, but the
extra functions normally won't be of much use to typical
crypto/security applications.
        
LTM is under a free software license; MIRACL is proprietary, although
the source code is downloadable and can be used at no charge for (at
least some) noncommercial applications.

You might also take a look at GMP, which is under the Gnu LGPL, and
(like MIRACL) includes fast assembly code. There is also the bn
library which is part of OpenSSL. I believe bn is generally pretty
fast, but not quite as fast as GMP or MIRACL.

Relevant Pages

  • LibTomMath vs MIRACL
    ... I would like to know which Cryptographic libraries ... MIRACL however is very easy-to-use library with a good manual. ... LibTomMath library compare to MIRACL speed-wise? ...
    (sci.crypt)
  • Re: Which is the Fastest ANSI C Cryptographic Library?
    ... > I become very accustomed to MIRACL C only version, however their assembler ... I know that Tom worked pretty hard optimizing LTM. ... he expected people concerned about speed would use the assembly code. ...
    (sci.crypt)