Montgomery modular multiplication

rdf:langString Montgomery modular multiplication

rdf:langString In modular arithmetic computation, Montgomery modular multiplication, more commonly referred to as Montgomery multiplication, is a method for performing fast modular multiplication. It was introduced in 1985 by the American mathematician Peter L. Montgomery. Montgomery modular multiplication relies on a special representation of numbers called Montgomery form. The algorithm uses the Montgomery forms of a and b to efficiently compute the Montgomery form of ab mod N. The efficiency comes from avoiding expensive division operations. Classical modular multiplication reduces the double-width product ab using division by N and keeping only the remainder. This division requires quotient digit estimation and correction. The Montgomery form, in contrast, depends on a constant R > N which is coprime to N, and the only division necessary in Montgomery multiplication is division by R. The constant R can be chosen so that division by R is easy, significantly improving the speed of the algorithm. In practice, R is always a power of two, since division by powers of two can be implemented by bit shifting. The need to convert a and b into Montgomery form and their product out of Montgomery form means that computing a single product by Montgomery multiplication is slower than the conventional or Barrett reduction algorithms. However, when performing many multiplications in a row, as in modular exponentiation, intermediate results can be left in Montgomery form. Then the initial and final conversions become a negligible fraction of the overall computation. Many important cryptosystems such as RSA and Diffie–Hellman key exchange are based on arithmetic operations modulo a large odd number, and for these cryptosystems, computations using Montgomery multiplication with R a power of two are faster than the available alternatives.