ECC2K-130 on Cell CPUs

This paper describes an implementation of Pollard's rho algorithm to compute the elliptic curve discrete logarithm for the Synergistic Processor Elements of the Cell Broadband Engine Architecture. Our implementation targets the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem defined in the Certicom ECC2K-130 challenge. We compare a bitsliced implementation to a non-bitsliced implementation and describe several optimization techniques for both approaches. In particular, we address the question whether normal-basis or polynomial-basis representation of field elements leads to better performance. We show that using our software the ECC2K-130 challenge can be solved in one year using the Synergistic Processor Units of less than 2700 Sony Playstation 3 gaming consoles.