Paper 2024/1288

KpqClean Ver2: Comprehensive Benchmarking and Analysis of KpqC Algorithm Round 2 Submissions

Abstract

From 2022, Korean Post-Quantum Cryptography (KpqC) Competition has been held. Among the Round 1 algorithms of KpqC, eight algorithms were selected in December 2023. To evaluate the algorithms, the performance is critical factor. However, the performance of the algorithms submitted to KpqC was evaluated in different development environments. Consequently, it is difficult to compare the performance of each algorithm fairly, because the measurements were not conducted in the identical development environments. In this paper, we introduce KpqClean ver2, the successor to the KpqClean project. KpqClean ver2 provides comprehensive benchmark analysis results for all KpqC Round 2 algorithms across various environments (Ryzen, Intel, and aarch64). This framework includes both a ``clean'' implementation and an ``avx2'' implementation of the KpqC Round 2 candidate algorithms. To benchmark the algorithms, we not only removed external library dependencies from each algorithm but also integrated the same source code for common algorithms (such as AES, SHA2, SHAKE, and etc.) to enable more accurate performance comparisons. The framework automatically recognizes the user’s environment, providing easy benchmarking for all users without the need for separate settings. This study also includes memory usage analysis using Valgrind for each algorithm and function usage proportion analysis during the execution of each cryptographic algorithm using Xcode's profiling tool. Finally we show that the practical strength of KpqC algorithms in terms of execution timing and memory usages. This result can be utilized for the understanding of KpqC finalist in terms of performance.