At the coming of the IoT era, we enjoy a more convenient life in all aspects. Still, we also need to evaluate the information security issue resulted thereof carefully at the same time. Concerning this issue, a safety platform device plays an essential role. It is crucial to protect intellectual property and information security in the operation of microcontrollers and microprocessors. Intellectual property safety aims to use software and hardware methods to prevent important information in the device from being stolen. In contrast, information security refers to take precautions during the communication and data transmission process to prevent hackers from stealing confidential data and acquiring illegal benefits.

Based on the previous two points, we currently have research proposing many encryption/ decryption methods to achieve safety management: symmetric AES and triple-DES (TDES) or asymmetric cryptography such as ECC, RSA, and hashing algorithms such as SHA and MD5. The engineer may use appropriate encryption/decryption algorithms according to different situations and standards. For example, RSA and SHA can achieve secure boot, while AES aims to process a great amount of data transmission.

To ensure product safety and improve efficiency, the microprocessor of the Nuvoton NUC980 series provides a complete hardware crypto accelerator (AES, SHA, HMAC, RSA, ECC). The hardware adopted for processing improves efficiency and reduces the CPU burden and enables the application program to fully utilize the CPU's efficiency compared to using software for encryption/decryption and hashing algorithm. Moreover, the encryption/decryption algorithm executed by the hardware can reduce the CPU interference and decrease possible attacks via the software. The advantage of the hardware crypto accelerator is revealed by the Nuvoton NUC980 development platform's tests due to the significant difference between the encryption speeds of the software and hardware. The speed advantage of using a hardware crypto engine for processing is more apparent when processing a considerable amount of data.

Besides the standard hardware crypto engine mentioned above, the NUC980 series with ARM926EJ-S core can speed up to 300 MHz, while the built-in memory has 16 MB, 64 MB, and 128 MB DDR-II available for selection. It offers 64-pin, 128-pin, and 216-pin LQFP packages to reduce PCB size and EMI issues significantly. Rich peripherals include ten sets of UART interfaces, 2 Ethernet, four sets of CAN 2.0 B, eight sets of USB Host, 2 SDIO/eMMC interfaces, NAND Flash interface, QSPI NAND interface, ISO-7816 interface, and high-speed USB 2.0 host/device to meet the application demands of customers, especially for the application of industrial control such as the IIoT gateway, network printer equipment, meter concentrator, and smart home gateway. The NUC980 series also complies with industrial temperature standards of - 40°C to 85°C.