Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2020/836

Assembly or Optimized C for Lightweight Cryptography on RISC-V?

Fabio Campos and Lars Jellema and Mauk Lemmen and Lars Müller and Daan Sprenkels and Benoit Viguier

Abstract: A major challenge when applying cryptography on constrained environments is the trade-off between performance and security. In this work, we analyzed different strategies for the optimization of several candidates of NIST's lightweight cryptography standardization project on a RISC-V architecture. In particular, we studied the general impact of optimizing symmetric-key algorithms in assembly and in plain C. Furthermore, we present optimized implementations, achieving a speed-up of up to 81% over available implementations, and discuss general implementation strategies.

Category / Keywords: implementation / implementation, RISC-V, lightweight cryptography, software optimization, NIST

Date: received 7 Jul 2020

Contact author: b viguier at cs ru nl, campos at sopmac de, d sprenkels at cs ru nl, mail at lars-mueller com, M Lemmen at student ru nl, lars jellema at gmail com

Available format(s): PDF | BibTeX Citation

Version: 20200712:122809 (All versions of this report)

Short URL: ia.cr/2020/836