Microarchitecture design and benchmarking of custom SHA-3 instruction for RISC-V

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Integrating cryptographic accelerators into modern CPU architectures presents unique microarchitectural challenges, particularly when extending instruction sets with complex and multistage operations. Hardware-assisted cryptographic instructions, such as Intel’s AES-NI and ARM’s custom instructions for encryption workloads, have demonstrated substantial performance improvements. However, efficient SHA-3 acceleration remains an open problem due to its distinct permutation-based structure and memory access patterns. Existing solutions primarily rely on standalone coprocessors or software optimizations, often avoiding the complexities of direct microarchitectural integration. This study investigates the architectural challenges of embedding a SHA-3 permutation operation as a custom instruction within a general-purpose processor, focusing on pipelined simultaneous execution, storage utilization, and hardware cost. In this paper, we investigated and prototyped a SHA-3 custom instruction for the RISC-V CPU architecture. Using cycle-accurate GEM5 simulations and FPGA prototyping, our results demonstrate performance improvements of up to 8.02× for RISC-V optimized SHA-3 software workloads and up to 46.31× for Keccak-specific software workloads, with only a 15.09% increase in registers and a 11.51% increase in LUT utilization. These findings provide critical insights into the feasibility and impact of SHA-3 acceleration at the microarchitectural level, highlighting practical design considerations for future cryptographic instruction set extensions.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2025 IEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI (ISVLSI): Proceedings
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Publication statusAccepted - 23 May 2025
EventIEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI: ISVLSI 2025 - Kalamata, Greece
Duration: 06 Jul 202509 Jul 2025

Publication series

NameIEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI (ISVLSI): Proceedings
ISSN (Print)2159-3469
ISSN (Electronic)2159-3477

Conference

ConferenceIEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI: ISVLSI 2025
Country/TerritoryGreece
CityKalamata
Period06/07/202509/07/2025

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