Crypto Cell 310 dev on nRF9160

[Nico_ID]

Hi all,

I acquired the wonderful nRF9160 DevKit which embeds the ARM CryptoCell 310.

Rather than using the mbedTLS or TinyCrypt libs, I would like to rely on the CC310 piece of hardware to perform some cryptographic computation.

However, I haven't been able to find any sample code or documentation regarding interfaces, API to use.

Can someone help me, point me out some hints to start using CC310 ?

Thanks.

[Sigurd]

Hi,

We have a initial release of nrf_cc310_bl for the nRF Connect SDK in nrfxlib, see this link. (Note that these libraries are delivered in an experimental state).

API documentation can be found here. The CC310 peripheral documenation can be found here.

[Nico_ID]

Thanks for the answer.

However, your initial release of nrf_cc310_bl seems to be dedicated to bootloader usage, with limited set of crypto features (compared to the bunch of them embedded in CC310).

How can I access the full set of algos ?

On this page (https://www.nordicsemi.com/DocLib/Content/Product_Spec/nRF9160/latest/cryptocell?196#cc_frontpage) there is a mention to a CryptoCell library. Is that the nrf_cc310_bl or another ?

Is there a lower level doc to communicate with CC310 ? the nRF doc only talks about ENABLE register.

[Sigurd]

Nico_ID said:

However, your initial release of nrf_cc310_bl seems to be dedicated to bootloader usage, with limited set of crypto features (compared to the bunch of them embedded in CC310).

That is correct. nrf_cc310_bl is designed to be size-optimized and intended for use cases involving the bootloader and DFU.

Nico_ID said:

How can I access the full set of algos ?

We are still working on the nrf_cc310 library for the nRF9160. I believe it will be included in the next release of nRF Connect SDK (March/April timeframe).

Nico_ID said:

Is there a lower level doc to communicate with CC310 ? the nRF doc only talks about ENABLE register.

No. The cryptographic functions of CC310 are only accessible by using the mentioned library, not directly via a register interface.

[Nico_ID]

Great, I'm eager to get the April update.

Is there any particular reason to justify that the CC310 mailbox system and the associated regsiters are not public ?

[Sigurd]

Nico_ID said:

Is there any particular reason to justify that the CC310 mailbox system and the associated regsiters are not public ?

It is not public because the CC310 registers list and CC310 source code used in the library is confidential IP(Intellectual property) owned by ARM® Limited. So Nordic is not allowed to make this public.