Camellia is a 128-bit block cipher, which was developed by NTT and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation. Camellia supports 128-bit block size and 128-, 192-, and 256-bit keys, i.e. the same interface specifications as the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Efficiency on both software and hardware platforms is a remarkable characteristic of Camellia in addition to its high level of security. It is confirmed that Camellia provides strong security against differential and linear cryptanalysis. Compared to the AES finalists, i.e. MARS, RC6, Rijndael, Serpent, and Twofish, Camellia offers at least comparable encryption speed in software and hardware. An optimized implementation of Camellia in assembly language can encrypt on a Pentium III (800MHz) at the rate of more than 276 Mbits per second, which is much faster than the speed of an optimized DES implementation. In addition, a distinguishing feature is its small hardware design. The hardware design, which includes both encryption and decryption, occupies approximately 11K gates, which is the smallest among all existing 128-bit block ciphers as far as we know.

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