  As digital content services gain importance in the mobile world, Digital
Rights Management (DRM) applications will become a key component of mobile
terminals. This paper examines the effect dedicated hardware macros for
specific cryptographic functions have on the performance of a mobile terminal
that supports version 2 of the open standard for Digital Rights Management
defined by the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA). Following a general description of
the standard, the paper contains a detailed analysis of the cryptographic
operations that have to be carried out before protected content can be
accessed. The combination of this analysis with data on execution times for
specific algorithms realized in hardware and software has made it possible to
build a model which has allowed us to assert that hardware acceleration for
specific cryptographic algorithms can significantly reduce the impact DRM has
on a mobile terminal's processing performance and battery life.
