Paper 2025/825

High-Performance FPGA Implementations of Lightweight ASCON-128 and ASCON-128a with Enhanced Throughput-to-Area Efficiency

Ahmet Malal, Aselsan (Turkey), Middle East Technical University
Abstract

The ASCON algorithm was chosen for its efficiency and suitability for resource-constrained environments such as IoT devices. In this paper, we present a high-performance FPGA implementation of ASCON-128 and ASCON-128a, optimized for the throughput-to-area ratio. By utilizing a 6-round permutation in one cycle for ASCON-128 and a 4-round permutation in one cycle for ASCON-128a, we have effectively maximized throughput while ensuring efficient resource utilization. Our implementation shows significant improvements over existing designs, achieving 34.16\% better throughput-to-area efficiency on Artix-7 and 137.58\% better throughput-to-area efficiency on Kintex-7 FPGAs. When comparing our results on the Spartan-7 FPGA with Spartan-6, we observed a 98.63\% improvement in throughput-to-area efficiency. However, it is important to note that this improvement may also be influenced by the advanced capabilities of the Spartan-7 platform compared to the older Spartan-6, in addition to the design optimizations implemented in this work.

Metadata
Available format(s)
PDF
Category
Implementation
Publication info
Published elsewhere. 2024 17th International Conference on Information Security and Cryptology (ISCTürkiye)
DOI
10.1109/ISCTrkiye64784.2024.10779273
Keywords
ASCONLightweight CryptographyHardware CryptographyFPGA Implementation
Contact author(s)
ahmet malal @ metu edu tr
History
2025-05-09: approved
2025-05-09: received
See all versions
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2025/825
License
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
CC BY-NC-ND

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2025/825,
      author = {Ahmet Malal},
      title = {High-Performance {FPGA} Implementations of Lightweight {ASCON}-128 and {ASCON}-128a with Enhanced Throughput-to-Area Efficiency},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2025/825},
      year = {2025},
      doi = {10.1109/ISCTrkiye64784.2024.10779273},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/825}
}
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