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RISC-V Cryptography Extensions Task Group Announces Public Review of the Scalar Cryptography Extensions

By September 3, 2021No Comments

The Cryptography Extensions Task Group is delighted to announce the start of the public review period for the RISC-V Scalar Cryptography extensions. The RISC-V Scalar Cryptography extensions enable the acceleration of cryptographic workloads and add support for narrow 32 and 64-bit data paths. Additionally, these extensions dramatically lower the barrier to entry for secure and efficient accelerated cryptography in IoT and embedded devices. The proposed standard Scalar Cryptography extensions to the RISC-V ISA are:

  • Zknd – NIST Suite: AES Decryption
  • Zkne – NIST Suite: AES Encryption
  • Zknh – NIST Suite: Hash Function Instructions
  • Zksed – ShangMi Suite: SM4 Block Cipher Instructions
  • Zksh – ShangMi Suite: SM3 Hash Function Instructions
  • Zkr – Entropy Source Extension
  • Zkn – NIST Algorithm Suite (shorthand for Zknd_Zkne_Zknh_Zbkb_Zbkc_Zbkx)
  • Zks – ShangMi Algorithm Suite  (shorthand for Zksed_Zksh_Zbkb_Zbkc_Zbkx)
  • Zk – Standard scalar cryptography extension (shorthand for Zkn_Zkt_Zkr)
  • Zkt – Data Independent Execution Latency
  • Zbkb – Bitmanip instructions for Cryptography
  • Zbkc – Carry-less multiply instructions
  • Zbkx – Crossbar permutation instructions

The review period begins today, Thursday Sept 2, 2021, and ends on Sunday October 17, 2021 (inclusive). The extensions described in the PDF spec were generated from the source available in the riscv-crypto GitHub repo.

To respond to the public review, please email comments to the public isa-dev mailing list or add issues and/or pull requests to the Crypto GitHub repo. We welcome all input and appreciate your time and effort in helping us by reviewing the specification.

During the public review period, corrections, comments, and suggestions, will be gathered for review by the Cryptography Task Group. Any minor corrections and/or uncontroversial changes will be incorporated into the specification. Any remaining issues or proposed changes will be addressed in the public review summary report. If there are no issues that require incompatible changes to the public review specification, the unprivileged ISA committee will recommend the updated specifications be approved and ratified by the RISC-V Technical Steering Committee and the RISC-V Board of Directors.

RISC-V International and the entire community would like to thank Richard Newell, Ben Marshall, Markku Saarinen, as well as all the members of the Cryptography Task Group for their hard work.

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