The design of scalar AES Instruction Set Extensions for RISC-V

Authors

  • Ben Marshall Department of Computer Science, University of Bristol
  • G. Richard Newell Microchip Technology Inc., USA
  • Dan Page Department of Computer Science, University of Bristol
  • Markku-Juhani O. Saarinen PQShield, UK
  • Claire Wolf Symbiotic EDA

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.46586/tches.v2021.i1.109-136

Keywords:

ISE, AES, RISC-V

Abstract

Secure, efficient execution of AES is an essential requirement on most computing platforms. Dedicated Instruction Set Extensions (ISEs) are often included for this purpose. RISC-V is a (relatively) new ISA that lacks such a standardized ISE. We survey the state-of-the-art industrial and academic ISEs for AES, implement and evaluate five different ISEs, one of which is novel. We recommend separate ISEs for 32 and 64-bit base architectures, with measured performance improvements for an AES-128 block encryption of 4x and 10x with a hardware cost of 1.1K and 8.2K gates respectively, when compared to a software-only implementation based on use of T-tables. We also explore how the proposed standard bit-manipulation extension to RISC-V can be harnessed for efficient implementation of AES-GCM. Our work supports the ongoing RISC-V cryptography extension standardisation process.

Published

2020-12-03

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

The design of scalar AES Instruction Set Extensions for RISC-V. (2020). IACR Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems, 2021(1), 109-136. https://doi.org/10.46586/tches.v2021.i1.109-136