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Abit motherboard adds security chip
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Tuesday, January 21, 2003
After decades of development that can trace its roots all the way back to World War II, the market for security chips finally appears poised for a takeoff.
Cavium Networks Inc. today will take the covers off a deal it inked to build its NITROX security chips directly onto ABIT motherboards. Experts in the field say this is only the beginning of a big push to offload security onto a separate processor, and the number of players that have swelled into this market will consolidate as the market matures over the next few years.
What has changed is that there is a growing need for power conservation, said Eric Mantion, senior analyst at In-Stat/MDR. Add to that the fact that security chip vendors have made it far easier to use their chips by eliminating proprietary interfaces, and the market is expected to grow from $60 million in 2002 to $575 million in 2006.
"The security market is real," Mantion said. "Two years ago, the prevailing attitude was to build processors that were bigger and faster. This is like what happened in the auto industry back in 70s, before OPEC closed the doors. Now the emphasis is on more power-efficiency."
The goal is to add a co-processor that can do the same job faster for a fraction of the wattage.
Syed Ali, Cavium’s president and CEO, said the price would rise about $50 to $100 per motherboard to include NITROX chips. He said as volumes increase, the difference will drop as low as $15.
"At that point it becomes a no-brainer," Ali said. "Security is very math-intensive. This is not something a general-purpose processor is very good at."
Cavium is far from alone in this market. The list of entrants includes two other startups, Corrent Corp. and Layer N. Also playing in this market are Broadcom, Motorola, Hifn, NetOctave, and Philips. Intel Corp., meanwhile, is building security directly into its network processors.
Judging from the interest in this market, it appears that security chips are a new idea. In reality, the idea grew directly out of the efforts in World War II to crack the German Enigma code, which had three rotating disks in the first version and four rotating disks in the second version. But what really got the need for decryption going was the Lorenz cipher, which used 12 different wheels and which was never fully broken.
That led to the creation of the first digital computer, known as Colossus, to decode messages. While decryption has continued to develop since then, it has never had to play in a mass market.
Current government initiatives for security, plus the move to digitize medical records nationwide, have forced the issue. But rather than bog down a general processor such as a Pentium or Athlon chip, systems vendors are now focusing on offloading some of the tasks the same way graphics cards currently do.
By: DocMemory
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