SHA-3: FPGA Implementation of ESSENCE and ECHO Hash Algorithm Candidates Using Bluespec

NIST has opened a public competition to develop a new cryptographic hash algorithm, and after the first round various algorithms have emerged as possible candidates. In this work, we have implemented on FPGA two of the candidates from the first round that are not known to be broken at this time, namely, ESSENCE by Jason Worth Martin and ECHO by the Cryptographic Research Group at Orange Labs, France Telecom. These algorithms convert a variable length message into a shorter message or hash that can be used for digital signatures, message authentication, and other applications. This report presents our design of these algorithms, coded in Bluespec and implemented on Altera’s Cyclone II FPGA.