[torgoguys]

>Even the tiniest MCU can typically perform more than one cryptographic operation per second. If your MCU has any cycles to spare at all it usually has enough cycles for cryptography.

>1 operation per second would refer to cryptographic signatures. If you are doing Chacha, the speeds are more like 1 mbps. AES is probably closer to 400 kbps.

It sounds to me like you, sir or madame, have not worked with truly tiny MCUs. :-)

But yes, there are inexpensive MCUs where you can do quite a bit of crypto in software at decent speeds.