On the design of high speed self-synchronizing stream ciphers

The design strategy for high speed self-synchronizing stream ciphers as presented in Maurer (1991) is criticized. An alternative, engineering oriented design approach is given. To show that it can be followed in practice, an actual design is presented and motivated. This SSSC is claimed to be fast (gate delay 2 XORs), cryptographically secure and easily implementable in hardware (standard cells)