Bus Decryption Overhead Minimization with Code Compression

Code compression has been shown to be efficient in minimizing memory sizes for embedded systems as well as in power consumption reduction and performance improvement. In this paper we claim that code compression is also able to minimize the performance penalty of bus encryption schemes, where a ciphered program flows through a deciphering unit and reaches the processing unit. The result on performance for the Leon Processor, using a set of benchmarks from MediaBench and MiBench suites reveals that the AES deciphering unit can be used more rarely (50% less) and performance is never degraded comparing to the original secure system.