StreamNTT performance tested on open source Verilog routing toolchain
Benchmarking StreamNTT with a Verilog-to-Routing Toolchain
Hardware Architecture
Summary
StreamNTT is a tool that speeds up key calculations used in new types of encryption meant to be safe from quantum computers. The original version needed special commercial software and hardware, which made it hard for others to compare or use. The authors recreated StreamNTT using an open-source toolchain and found it uses similar amounts of digital processing parts and multipliers. However, it uses memory differently, showing that more work is needed to match the commercial tool's efficiency.
What this means in practice
- •For data center hardware teams: Use an open-source toolchain to build post-quantum cryptography accelerators for benchmarking and development without relying on commercial software.
- •For embedded systems engineers: Design FPGA-based accelerators for quantum-safe cryptography that balance resource use and memory for improved performance.
Authors
Wei He, Young-kyu Choi, Hyunwoo Park, Sunwoong Kim
Abstract
As post-quantum cryptography algorithms move toward large-scale data center deployment, hardware acceleration of their computational bottleneck, which is the number theoretic transform (NTT), has gained increasing attention. StreamNTT, a high-level synthesis- and field-programmable gate array-based accelerator, achieves state-of-the-art throughput through various optimization techniques. However, its reliance on a commercial tool and a device makes direct comparisons difficult for researchers without access. We address this by building StreamNTT on an open-source Verilog-to-Routing toolchain, which achieves similar digital signal processing and multiplier usage. Significant differences in internal memory utilization indicate that further memory-level optimization is needed to approach commercial tool performance.