CYPRIS (microchip)

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CYPRIS is a cryptographic RISC microprocessor developed by Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Laboratories in the late 1990s. It was built to run NSA encryption algorithms and was intended to be similar to other crypto modules like AIM and Sierra. It never received NSA Type 1 certification, so it could not be used to protect classified government traffic. The device was designed to meet the cryptographic needs of military software radios and wireless systems and was developed under an NSA contract. It was optimized to implement legacy COMSEC and TRANSEC algorithms while allowing field upgrades to new INFOSEC algorithms. CYPRIS combines a high-performance RISC core, a reconfigurable hardware unit, and programmable automatic system checks. When unprogrammed, it is unclassified, non-CCI, and exportable; once programmed, it takes on the classification of its software. More than 20 core crypto algorithms were developed for CYPRIS.