Purpose The data protection is always a vital problem in the network era. High-speed cryptographic chip is an important part to ensure data security in information interaction. This paper aims to provide a new peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) encryption card solution with high performance, high integration and low cost. Design/methodology/approach This work proposes a System on Chip architecture scheme of high-speed cryptographic chip for PCIe encryption card. It integrated CPU, direct memory access, the national and international cipher algorithm (data encryption standard/3 data encryption standard, Rivest–Shamir–Adleman, HASH, SM1, SM2, SM3, SM4, SM7), PCIe and other communication interfaces with advanced extensible interface-advanced high-performance bus three-level bus architecture. Findings This paper presents a high-speed cryptographic chip that integrates several high-speed parallel processing algorithm units. The test results of post-silicon sample shows that the high-speed cryptographic chip can achieve Gbps-level speed. That means only one single chip can fully meet the requirements of cryptographic operation performance for most cryptographic applications. Practical implications The typical application in this work is PCIe encryption card. Besides server’s applications, it can also be applied in terminal products such as high-definition video encryption, security gateway, secure routing, cloud terminal devices and industrial real-time monitoring system, which require high performance on data encryption. Social implications It can be well applied on many other fields such as power, banking, insurance, transportation and e-commerce. Originality/value Compared with the current strategy of high-speed encryption card, which mostly uses hardware field-programmable gate arrays or several low-speed algorithm chips through parallel processing in one printed circuit board, this work has provided a new PCIe encryption card solution with high performance, high integration and low cost only in one chip.