Which primary advantage does an elliptical curve cryptosystem have over an RSA-based cryptosystem?

Elliptical curve cryptography (ECC) offers faster performance because it can achieve similar levels of security as a longer RSA key while using a smaller key length (for instance, a 228-bit elliptical curve key is roughly equivalent to a 2,380-bit RSA key). It's worth noting that using the same key for both encryption and decryption is a feature of symmetric encryption cryptosystems; however, neither ECC nor RSA are symmetric algorithms. Although both algorithms can be run on older processors using appropriate cryptographic libraries or programming, they may still run slower. Additionally, both ECC and RSA can be used for digital signatures.