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With the advent of large-scale quantum computers, factoring and discrete logarithm problems could be solved using the polynomialtime quantum algorithms. To ensure public-key security, a transition to quantum-resistant cryptographic protocols is required. Performance of hardware accelerators targeting different platforms and diverse application goals plays an important role in PQC candidates’ differentiation. Hardware accelerators based on FPGAs and ASICs also provide higher flexibility to create a very low area or ultra-high performance implementations at the high cost of the other. While the hardware/software codesign development of PQC schemes has already received an increasing research effort, a cost analysis of efficient pure hardware implementation is still lacking. On the other hand, since FPGA has various types of hardware resources, evaluating and making the accurate and fair comparison of hardware-based implementations against each other is very challenging. Without a common foundation, apples are compared to oranges. This paper demonstrates a pure hardware architecture for Kyber as one of the finalists in the third round of the NIST post-quantum cryptography standardization process. To enable real, realistic, and comparable evaluations in PQC schemes over hardware platforms, we compare our architecture over the ASIC platform as a common foundation showing that it outperforms the previous works in the literature.
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Quantum Cryptography and Simulation: Tools and Techniques
The advancement of quantum mechanics has accelerated the quantum computer architecture and hardware. However, algorithms and implementations to take the full advantage of entanglements provided by quantum devices are still far behind. Quantum cryptography offers the possibility of theoretically perfect security based on the principles of quantum mechanics, ensuring that the presence of an eavesdropper will be detected before any sensitive information is transmitted. However, the relevant technology is still under development – hardware, though commercially available, is still in an immature state, and the protocols used to implement secure communications using that hardware may still be improved. The use of simulations is an important tool for studying quantum cryptography, as they can enable researchers to make valuable insights at a relatively low cost. The data garnered from working with simulations can provide direction for further research both in the development of new communications protocols and in the improvement of actual hardware systems.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2000136
- PAR ID:
- 10213980
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The 4th International Conference on Cryptography, Security and Privacy
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 36 to 41
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3377644.3377671
