text: In the ensuing debate, many advantages and disadvantages of the candidates were investigated by cryptographers; they were assessed not only on security, but also on performance in a variety of settings (PCs of various architectures, smart cards, hardware implementations) and on their feasibility in limited environments (smart cards with very limited memory, low gate count implementations, FPGAs).
  Some designs fell due to cryptanalysis that ranged from minor flaws to significant attacks, while others lost favour due to poor performance in various environments or through having little to offer over other candidates. NIST held two conferences to discuss the submissions (AES1, August 1998 and AES2, March 1999), and in August 1999 they announced that they were narrowing the field from fifteen to five: MARS, RC6, Rijndael, Serpent, and Twofish. All five algorithms, commonly referred to as "AES finalists", were designed by cryptographers considered well-known and respected in the community.
  The AES2 conference votes were as follows:
  Rijndael: 77 positive, 1 negative
  RC6: 79 positive, 6 negative
  Twofish: 64 positive, 3 negative
  MARS: 58 positive, 6 negative
  Serpent: 52 positive, 7 negative
  E2: 27 positive, 13 negative
  CAST-256: 16 positive, 18 negative
  SAFER+: 20 positive, 24 negative
  DFC: 22 positive, 27 negative
  Crypton: 16 positive, 31 negative
  DEAL: 1 positive, 71 negative
  HPC: 1 positive, 78 negative