Future work on the DES cracker will include using hand placement of logic on the new TM-3 system. Hand placement can sometimes dramatically improve the speed.
    Also, the technology we are using right now is about 2 years old. New larger and faster FPGAs are able to perform much better. For example, we estimate that the speed on the new TM-3 system will be three billion keys per second.
    A comparison of different methods is shown. The last row shows the speed cost ratio in keys per second per dollar.  The ASIC method is an order of magnitude faster than the TM-2a. However, the TM-3 comes very close to the ASIC speeds. This shows that the programmable logic solution to DES cracking is viable and in some ways superior to an ASIC solution.

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