Information Technology Journal1812-56381812-5646Asian Network for Scientific Information10.3923/itj.2009.403.410Al-SomaniTurki F. KhanEsam A. Qamar-ul-IslamAhmad M. HoussainHilal 4200984This study presents a survey of hardware/software co-design implementations of Elliptic Curve Cryptosystems (ECCs). A critical study of the underlying finite field, the representation basis and the partitioning schemes of these implementations is conducted. The study shows that all implementations are implemented over binary fields GF(2m) and the implementations that use polynomial basis are more than implementations that use normal basis for finite field arithmetic. The study also shows that the best partitioning scheme, among the surveyed implementations, implements the finite field arithmetic on hardware and the remaining operations of the ECC on software.]]>Batina, L., A. Hodjat, D. Hwang, K. Sakiyama and I. Verbauwhede,20062006pp: 14Biggs, N.,20032nd Edn.,Cheung, R., W. Luk and P. Cheung,20052005pp: 2429Cohen, H., A. Miyaji and T. Ono,19971997pp: 282290Cohen, H., A. Miyaji and T. Ono,19981998pp: 5165Cohen, H., G. Frey, R. Avanzi, C. Doche, T. Lange, K. Nguyen and F. Vercauteren,20051st Edn.,ElGamal, T., 19851985pp: 1018Ernst, R.,1998154554Ernst, M., M. Jung, F. Madlener, S. Huss and R. Blumel,2002n).]]>2002pp: 381399Franke, D.W. and M.K. Purvis,19911991pp: 344352Hankerson, D., A. Menezes and S. Vanstone,20041st Edn.,Janssens, S., J. Thomas, W. Borremans and P. Gijsels,20012001pp: 209216Jussel, J. and C. Sullivan,2003Koblitz, N.,198748203209Koschuch, M., J. Lenchner, A. Weitzer, J. Grobschadl, A. Szekely, T. Tillich and J. Wolkerstorfer,20062006pp: 430444Koyama, K. and Y. Tsutuoka,19921992pp: 345357Lidl, R. and H. Niederreiter,19942nd Edn.,Lopez, J. and R. Dahab,1998n).]]>pp: 201-212pp: 201-212Lopez, J. and R. Dahab,1999n) without precomputation.]]>1999pp: 316327McEliece, R.,19871st Edn.,Menezes, A.,19931st Edn.,Micheli, G.D. and R.K. Gupta,199785349365Miller, V.S.,19861986pp: 417426Ramsey, G.J.,20082008Rosing, M.,1999Rivest, R.L., A. Shamir and L. Adleman,197821120126Schaumont, P. and I. Verbauwhede,2003366874Sommerville, I.,20047th Edn.,Sullivan, C.,200213639Tham, K.S. and D.L. Maskell,20062006pp: 16Vahid, F.,2003362734Wolf, W.,2003363843Zeng, X., X. Zhou and Q. Zhang,20022002pp: 14961499