SoK: A Performance Evaluation of Cryptographic Instruction Sets on Modern Architectures

Author(s)

Faz-Hernandez, Armando ; Lopez, Julio ; de Oliveira, Ana Karma D. S. ; Assoc Comp Machinery

• Document type: Journal article
• Source: APKC'18: PROCEEDINGS OF THE 5TH ACM ASIA PUBLIC-KEY CRYPTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP; v. N/A, p. 10-pg., 2018-01-01.

Abstract

The latest processors have included extensions to the instruction set architecture tailored to speed up the execution of cryptographic algorithms. Like the AES New Instructions (AES-NI) that target the AES encryption algorithm, the release of the SHA New Instructions (SHA-NI), designed to support the SHA-256 hash function, introduces a new scenario for optimizing cryptographic software. In this work, we present a performance evaluation of several cryptographic algorithms, hash-based signatures and data encryption, on platforms that support AES-NI and/or SHA-NI. In particular, we revisited several optimization techniques targeting multiple-message hashing, and as a result, we reduce by 21% the running time of this task by means of a pipelined SHA-NI implementation. In publickey cryptography, multiple-message hashing is one of the critical operations of the XMSS and XMSSMT post-quantum hash-based digital signatures. Using SHA-NI extensions, signatures are computed 4x faster; however, our pipelined SHA-NI implementation increased this speedup factor to 4.3x. For symmetric cryptography, we revisited the implementation of AES modes of operation and reduced by 12% and 7% the running time of CBC decryption and CTR encryption, respectively. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 14/50704-7 - Secure execution of cryptographic algorithms
• Grantee: Julio César López Hernández
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Research Partnership for Technological Innovation - PITE