[Hardware] RC5 Challenges cancelled by RSA

[John L. Bass]

Sadly RSA cancelled the Secret Key Challenges last week without much warning. It
would have been nicer if they would have put an ending date on the challenges sometime
in the next year or two ... maybe like Dec 31 2009 to end the decade. I was actually
looking forward to a different, but promising FPGA attack on RC5 later this year.

Might be worth asking RSA to reconsider the abrupt termination, and ask for a
reasonable date a year or two out. The program over the years hasn't cost them
much, and created a lot of interest in crypto work as an application area in the
universities world wide. Especially in factoring.

For those still interested I have been working on cutting octal spartan boards this
next week ... with thanks to Bryan for some review help and suggestions. The board
now has an 8+1 Hypercube configuration with a separate controller FPGA. Onboard power
for about 100W of computation power (about as much as we can cool the Spartan Chips)
with a PCI slot fan and heat sinks.

The nice part about reconfigurable computing using FPGA's is they are relatively
easily retargeted to other projects.

Have fun,
John