These are the proceedings of WAIFI 2008, the second workshop on the Arithmetic
of Finite Fields, that was held in Siena, Italy, July 6-9, 2008. The first
workshop, WAIFI 2007, which was held in Madrid (Spain), was received quite
enthusiastically by mathematicians, computer scientists, engineers and physicists
who are performing research on finite field arithmetic. We believe that there is
a need for a workshop series bridging the gap between the mathematical theory
of finite fields and their hardware/software implementations and technical applications.
We hope that the WAIFI workshop series, which from now on will be
held on even years, will help to fill this gap.
There were 34 submissions to WAIFI 2008, of which the Program Committee
selected 16 for presentation. Each submission was reviewed by at least three
reviewers. Our thanks go to the Program Committee members for their many
contributions and hard work.We are also grateful to the external reviewers listed
below for their expertise and assistance in the deliberations. In addition to the
contributions appearing in these proceedings, the workshop program included
an invited lecture given by Amin Shokrollahi