Hi Bryce,

We would definitely be interested in working with you.  We have noticed that
we need to do most crypto algorithms via plugin's because of the 32 bit word
manipulation performance.  It would be interesting if we could get results
similar to the plugin from compiled implementations.  Most all the word
manipulation goes through ThirtyTwoBitRegister so I wonder if it would be
possible to rewrite it as a hander for the math instead and prevent object
creation that way.  I'm sure it would be an interesting conversation.
Please feel free to join the team at any time; we would love to have you!

By the way we still need some Crypto plugin's done in slang if anyone has
time and would like to work on or learn Crypto!  Anyone anyone?

Ron Teitelbaum
Squeak Cryptography Team Leader

> -----Original Message-----
> From: bryce at kampjes.demon.co.uk [mailto:bryce at kampjes.demon.co.uk]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2007 5:22 PM
> To: Ron at USMedRec.com; The general-purpose Squeak developers list
> Subject: RE: ByteArray implements #hash but not #=
> 
> Ron Teitelbaum writes:
> 
>  > Most of the work we do in the cryptography team is on small byteArrays
> so it
>  > would be very important that we do not lose speed there from any
> changes in
>  > implementation.
> 
> It would be easy to extend Exupery to be able to compile that method
> well. It's just SmallInteger arithmetic, ByteArray>>at: (not yet
> handled), and species.
> 
> I've talked a little to Martin about crypto, handling the byte based
> algorithms should be fairly easy. The word based ones will be harder
> but still very possible.
> 
> The trick to compile word based algorithms efficiently is to avoid
> generating objects for intermediate words. It's basically the same
> problem as compiling floats without any overhead. But fast full word
> compilation is definitely something that would have to wait until
> after 1.0 unless someone else would like to work on it.
> 
> It would be nice to work with the crypto team after the next release
> or two if you like the idea of compiling Smalltalk rather than writing
> primitives to provide speed.
> 
> Bryce