February 4, 2013, Seoul, Korea - Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE: FSL, www.freescale.com Regional Director Hwang Yeon-ho) announced the C29x cryptographic co-processor product family, a new security accelerator line designed to enable leading global data center equipment manufacturers to efficiently scale solutions in response to the dramatic increase in secure network traffic, as part of measures to strengthen its continued leadership in the rapidly growing data center market.

The new C29x cryptographic co-processor supports multi-chip, single PCI-E card solutions and delivers RSA 2048 computation performance exceeding 120K operations per second, providing more than 3x the performance of higher-cost PCI-E options currently offered by market-leading companies.

Tareq Bustami, Vice President of Product Management at Freescale's Digital Networking Group, stated, "Internet traffic security requirements are becoming increasingly stringent and complex, yet there are currently only a few suppliers in the security co-processor market. Customers are demanding high-performance co-processors that are cost and power efficient." He added, "Freescale leveraged its communications processor leadership and 30 years of embedded security research and development investment to develop the new C29x cryptographic co-processor, which provides the security and scalability needed for data centers to handle the massive increase in data volume."

As NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) recommends transitioning from RSA 1048-bit to RSA 2048-bit encryption, network security requirements have increased by up to 5 times, and accordingly, global mobile data traffic is expected to increase 18-fold over the next five years. Highly scalable security co-processors are expected to play a critical role in a wide range of applications including data center/cloud computing as well as security devices and hardware security modules used in banking, government, and defense equipment. (source: Cisco® Visual Networking Index Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast, 2011 to 2016)

Joseph Byrne, Senior Analyst at market research firm Linley Group, stated, "Freescale's new C29x cryptographic co-processor product family provides OEM manufacturers with more diverse options and significantly lower pricing at a time when network security is more important than ever." He added, "The security co-processor market is likely to be a high-margin market for Freescale's Digital Networking division."

The Freescale C29x product family provides scalability in both power and performance. The family is designed to accelerate RSA (up to 4k key capacity), Diffie Hellman, and ECC (Elliptical Curve Cryptography) algorithms and integrates bulk encryption capabilities of up to 10 Gbps. The C29x cryptographic co-processor consumes minimal power to fit thermally constrained designs, whether deployed within large data center blades or hardware security modules. The product family can also be used in single-chip or multi-chip PCI-E endpoint card configurations, or operated as a standalone processor.

Darren Learmonth, CTO (Chief Technology Officer) at Thales e-Security, stated, "Ensuring security for massive volumes of IP traffic is one of the most urgent challenges our industry currently faces." He added, "The Freescale C29x is an extremely flexible and cost-effective solution that will prove to be a highly attractive product in the market by successfully addressing this challenge."

Freescale will discuss the C29x applications and capabilities at the Linley Tech Data Center Conference, scheduled for February 5-6 at the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara, California. Freescale will also demonstrate C29x technology at booths 3002 and 3004 at RSA 2013 in San Francisco.

Availability
Freescale plans to provide initial C29x device samples in the first quarter of 2013, with various versions to follow at a starting price of $99 (USD) for quantities of 10,000 units on a direct purchase basis.