Accelerating Poly1305 cryptographic message authentication on the Z14

In this paper, we examine the implementation and acceleration of the Poly1305 authentication algorithm on the recently announced IBM z14 computer. Two approaches are undertaken to improve performance of this important cryptographic algorithm. First, we restructure the algorithm to take advantage of a new instruction, VMSL, which employs floating-point hardware to perform high-speed high-throughput multiplications on integer limbs (big-integer …