programming languages & GNU PG

[David Shaw]

On Thu, Jul 19, 2001 at 03:28:04PM +0300, Tuomas Pellonpera wrote:
> What is the significance of assembly language and Java for developing 
> cryptographic applications, such as GnuPG?
> 
> Is there any observable trend to move away from C to, for example,
> C++ and/or Java (now that there is a free implementation of Java --
> Kaffe)?

I've seen the occasional Java crypto, but like most other things, it's
a C world.  The Java crypto usually is for a specific niche, like the
Hushmail code or the SSH implementation intended for use within a
browser.

It is pretty common for crypto software to contain heavily optimized
assembly code on top of the regular C.  Modern crypto is very math
intensive, and the assembly code can be massaged into giving much
better performance than C.

David

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   David Shaw  |  dshaw@jabberwocky.com  |  WWW http://www.jabberwocky.com/
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