[Ocaml-biz] Let's choose a market

[William Neumann]

On Sep 11, 2004, at 9:29 AM, Brian Hurt wrote:

> Most crypto is done in C, when it isn't done in assembler.  As they
> actually do measure the performance of different implementations.

Depends on what you mean by most.  For people hooking into openssl 
libs, sure, but some of the most popular packages out there are C++ 
(with some dropping into C), such as Wei Dai's Crypto++ and Victor 
Shoup's NTL.  At Sandia, we have an astonishing amount of of our crypto 
code done in Lisp.  Java is making big inroads into crypto code because 
of the huge supplied library as well.

Speed in crypto is becoming less and less of an issue.  If you really 
"need" speed, you're going to go with a hardware coprocessor anyway (or 
a custom FPGA solution).  The only place people are really trying to 
speed things up is in public key operations, and that is absolutely 
dominated by algorithmic and mathematical concerns -- not by the 
programming language you chose (within reason -- no one want to see a 
PHP or bash solution...).

William D. Neumann

"You've got Rita Marlowe in the palm of your hand."
"Palm of my hand?  You haven't seen Rita Marlowe..."

		-- Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?