+There exist many academic implementations of cryptographic primitives, as well as Open Source RTL blocks. There also exist many heavily-optimised algorithms targetted at proprietary processors.
+
+* Hardcoded HDL (typically verilog or VHDL) for specific algorithms defeats the purpose of the intended exercise (crpyto *primitives*)
+* Crypto-primitives are not entirely useful on their own unless made accessible through an ISA
+* Proprietary ISAs typically provide certain aspects (GF8MULB - a byte-wise GF8 multiply that is only suitable for Rijndael) but do not provide general-purpose operations. OpenPOWER provides hardcoded primitives for Rijndael MixColumns and SHA256 but not much else.
+* Proprietary ISAs also provide SIMD bitmanipulation, suitable for cryptographic algorithms, but the optimised algorithms have to be written just above assembler level and are extremely hard to understand.
+
+The approach taken for this proposal is to go back to the underlying mathematical principles behind the crypto-primitives and target Cray-style Vector (not SIMD) ISA, with Matrix capability, directly at the mathematical operations. This has not been done before.