PIPELINE FOR HIGH-THROUGHPUT ENCRYPT FUNCTIONS

A method and network device to process network data is described. The method may comprise receiving the network data and security operation data at a security engine. The security operation data may be associated with a security operation (e.g., encryption, decryption, hashing, or the like) to be performed on the network data. The network data and the security operation data is communicated to a systolic array including a plurality of serially interconnected processing elements each defining a processing stage. Data in each processing stage may be processed in parallel to obtain processed network data. The processed data may be stored in a memory for use by a network processing module and may identify a destination of a packet in the network. In an example embodiment, decryption or encryption may be divided up into a plurality of sub-operations wherein each sub-operation is performed by a processing stage.